


Gameplay

by 14CombatGeishas



Series: Misadventures of the SI-5's Best Agents [5]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: BFFs being BFFs, Bulgaria - Freeform, Found Family, Gen, Jacobi POV, Maxwell POV, Mission Fic, Pre-Canon, SI-5, mentions of child abuse
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-10-09
Packaged: 2019-01-05 08:02:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 24,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12186105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14CombatGeishas/pseuds/14CombatGeishas
Summary: Jacobi and Maxwell are undercover in Bulgaria, working to steal a new rocket engine from a paranoid scientist.  Unfortunately they aren't the only ones after it.Plus, the bare necessities, enthusiastic grad students, Clue with Kepler, The Alabama Song, The Cheeses, the coup de main, white and black hats, and Funzo flashbacks





	1. Simon and Sniper Rifles

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aromanticpicard](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aromanticpicard/gifts).



> Takes place in May of 2014. So Jacobi better enjoy his flesh arm while he can, _I'm Your Savior_ is coming right up on him.
> 
> Although I've been to Bulgaria, I didn't feel comfortable asking someone from there to translate my fan fic so I used Google Translate. This is the first time I've sunk to that and I super apologize. If anyone reading this knows Bulgarian I would love to be able to fix it. It's also why there won't be as much Bulgarian as there was, say, Mandarin in _Citizens_.
> 
> Also I just realized how I should be using the "gift" function. 
> 
> This is for Dylan, for being a huge supporter and helping me with the nb stuff coming up in later chapters.

The Bulgarian landscape whizzed by Jacobi’s window, largely ignored.  The city of Bansko seemed to be far behind them now, the ski town’s souvenir shops, casinos, outdoors stores, and hotels had given way to flattened farm land. Bosnian pine grew thick on the looming mountains and pedunculate oak grew between cultivated fields.  The Pirin, Rila, and Rhodope Mountains looming distantly over the valley were peaked with white rock.  Daniel Jacobi and Alana Maxwell drove down open road toward the tiny village they’d be staying in for the next month, Proizvolengrad. Jacobi was behind the wheel of their Renault Clio hatchback, putting the subcompact through its paces, the small engine leaving him dissatisfied.  

“You don’t like Monopoly?!” asked Jacobi in disbelief, continuing their conversation.  

“You _like_ Monopoly?!” Maxwell asked.  He glanced in her direction; she wore an expression of borderline disgust. Behind her was a field filled with a cloud of sheep calmly grazing on the grass.  

“Yeah!” Jacobi answered.

“But it goes on _forever_!”

“Only if you play it wrong.”  

“How do you play Monopoly wrong?” Maxwell asked incredulously as the sheep disappeared behind them.  

“What happens when you land on Free Parking?” Jacobi asked.

“You get all the money people lost in the game.”

Jacobi made a buzzer noise, indicating she was wrong, “Nope.”

“Nope?” Maxwell asked, raising her eyebrows.  

“Nothing happens.  It’s Free Parking.  Free from anything happening, not free money.”

“Then what happens to the money?” Maxwell asked.

“It goes to the bank.”

“No way.  It always goes to Free Parking.”

“That’s just a house rule,” Jacobi said.

“Really?” she asked.

“’Fraid so,” Jacobi answered.  

“Huh.” Maxwell put her feet up on the dash.  “I never knew.  It’s still a shitty game.”

“I’m not saying Monopoly is the best game, but it doesn’t suck as much as, like, Candy Land or The Game of Life,” Jacobi said.

“Ugh,” Maxwell made a sound of disgust, “I _hate_ The Game of Life.”

“ _That_ goes on forever.”

“And you have to get married, get a terrible job, and have stupid kids,” Maxwell added, wrinkling her nose.

“That, too,” Jacobi agreed.  

And he did agree.  There was nothing he wanted less than the life outlined in the board game.  And he knew Maxwell felt the same way.  They had their ideal lives, and they had nothing to do with marriage, children, any blood relatives, or boring standard jobs. They were kindred spirits in that regard.  It was one of the many, many things that had tied them together in the past year, made them so very similar, made it feel as though they’d known each other a lifetime.  

“What do you think of Simon?” Maxwell asked.  

“I hate anything I can’t win,” Jacobi answered immediately.  

“You can cheat,” Maxwell pointed out.  

“How do you cheat at Simon?”

“You reprogram it to go slower,” Maxwell said.  

“Never tried that,” Jacobi admitted.  Jacobi was more likely to blow up something he didn’t like than to reprogram it.  Maxwell on the other hand...he wasn’t surprised she had done that. If she didn’t like how something worked, she just changed it until she did, whatever it may be.

Maxwell continued, “We didn’t actually own Simon.  It was in the basement of Pastor Maxwell’s church.”  That was how she often referred to her father, with the cold impersonal  “Pastor Maxwell.”  Jacobi had gotten used to hearing it.  She loathed her father as much as she had ever loathed anyone, as much as she could, with all the rage and bitterness in her heart, maybe even more than Jacobi hated his own father.  And wasn’t _that_ a statement?  He never would have thought that was possible until he met her.  Her hatred was quieter than his, less obvious, just under the surface, like pressure building up in a pipe bomb.   “It was in the Sunday School classroom. People thought it was broken.  I remember it sitting on the shelf next to this little wooden Noah’s Ark.”  She laughed suddenly, “That stupid ark.  It was older than I was.  One of the lions, the male lion I think, was all chewed up.”

“Like by a person?” Jacobi clarified.

“Yeah, some kid went all out on it.”

Jacobi laughed.  “In Milwaukee we had a Noah’s Ark, too.  Nobody tried eat any of it, though.”  Then he chuckled to himself, remembering something he hadn’t thought of in years.  “Oh man, we had this ragged-ass Kermit the Frog toy, they called it Rabbi Ribbet.  It had a kippah and a beard.  Damn, I haven’t thought about that thing in, like, decades,” Jacobi said.  

He could see it clearly in his mind.  Not a puppet, but a stuffed animal his Hebrew School teacher sat on her lap, moving its arms as she provided its voice, a poor imitation of Jim Henson’s.  The yamaka and beard were made of felt, hot glued to the toy’s head and face with visible globs at the edges. That was in his first synagogue, before his family moved away from Milwaukee, so his father could recruit in other places across the Midwest.  Growing up he moved around a lot thanks to his father’s job. There had been a handful of other synagogues he had attended. Then he turned 13, was Bar Mitzvahed, and allowed to stop going altogether aside from holidays.

He remembered Hebrew School, at some points with aching accuracy. It was never something he enjoyed. He often felt like an outcast there, the perpetual New Kid, the weirdo who liked playing with fire, literally, and had a meticulous interest in weaponry that made even his teachers uneasy.  When he was 10, Josh Pearlman, the son of the cantor, shoved him to the ground hard enough to break the bridge of his glasses. He lost the resulting fight and there had been Hell to Pay when he got home – for losing the fight rather than breaking the glasses.  He never forgave Josh Pearlman for that. Last year he’d finally, _finally_ gotten back at him, blowing up his home while he was on vacation. Unsolved arson.  That’ll teach you.

“Did you have GI Joes as a kid?”

“At _Hebrew School_?” Jacobi asked incredulously.

“No, just in general,” Maxwell said.  

“Yeah, I hated them,” he answered honestly.  “They just never held my attention.  They didn’t _do_ enough.  And their weapons were lame.  My dad got them for me for my birthday when I was a little kid. I never played with them.  When I was a teenager I blew them up.”

“I knew this would end in explosions,” Maxwell grinned at him affectionately.  

“Why’d you ask?”

Maxwell shrugged, “Just thinking about toys.  My brothers had GI Joes, especially my older brother who’s a couple years younger than you. He was very into them as a kid. My sisters had baby dolls.  One of my sisters was obsessed with them.  She called them her babies and was _always_ pretending to be a mother _,_ from the age of like two.  It was almost creepy.”

“Almost?” Jacobi asked.

“Definitely creepy.”

“Did you get dolls too?” Asked Jacobi.

“Yep,” Maxwell said.

“What’d you do with them?”

“Shoved them in a box somewhere, I think.  I didn’t give them to my sisters, I know that.  I wasn’t as ‘creative’ as you,” she said.  “Nothing exploded.”

“It’s too bad we didn’t know each other as kids,” Jacobi said.  “I bet they’d blow up real good.” He laughed again imagining it: strapping his homemade IEDs to the toy’s chest and watching the resulting chaos, the smell of burning cotton, melted plastic limbs and faces, exploded glass eyeballs.  

They were on mission here in Bulgaria. Under normal circumstances Jacobi would probably be paired up with another ballistics operative, Maxwell maybe taking a less active role,  but it was of the utmost importance and, with Major Kepler on mission… _somewhere_ doing _something_ extremely top secret…the two best were Jacobi and Maxwell.

The job was to find, rob, and assassinate one Vasil Ivanov, a chemist on the verge of inventing a breakthrough rocket capable of making missiles faster and more efficient. The problem was Ivanov had turned down Cutter enough times that Cutter had had enough waiting for him to come around.  Jacobi and Maxwell were to steal the complete plans, destroy any prototype, and discretely neutralize Dr. Ivanov.  

Death.  That was all you got for denying Cutter what he wanted.  Only an idiot defied Mr. Cutter.

So Jacobi and Maxwell had assumed new roles, Joss and Tessa Ri, husband and wife, a scientist and a self-employed app developer.  Joss was a physicist working out of an American laboratory, definitely not employed by Goddard Futuristics.  As far as Ivanov knew he would be working with Dr. Ri indefinitely.  Jacobi knew that “indefinitely” meant a month, at most, probably only a couple of weeks.  They’d both been taught Bulgarian, as usual Maxwell was better at the new language than Jacobi.  She picked up more vocabulary and her American accent thinned more than Jacobi’s had.  It astounded him how quickly Maxwell picked up new languages. Every single time.

Language mapping. It was what she did.

“There!”  Maxwell pointed to a sign ahead.  That was their turnoff. 

“Got it,” answered Jacobi.

The village was small but heavily populated. Older people sat out in plastic chairs on the sidewalk, talking among themselves.  Younger ones ran errands and sat smoking outside the corner store.  A group of teenagers walked down the center of a nearby road, avoiding the long grass on either side of it.  People walked here and there. Spoke to their neighbors and friends, and stared at the newcomers through their car windows.  Chickens walked proudly down the street along with the wild dogs that seemed to be endemic to most of the country.  A pack of them wandered past the car as Jacobi and Maxwell waited behind a farmer in his horse-drawn cart. Jacobi honked irritably at him, the only response was a glance backward.

They drove past the town square where the post office, city hall, and the bank were perpendicular on two sides of a perfect square.  In the center was an old communist memorial of some Bulgarian leader shaking or at least grasping Lenin’s hand, a hammer and sickle on the plaque at their stone feet. Parallel to town hall were cement stairs leading down to a garden with a wooden playground, newspaper stand, and restaurant.  Up a hill, the town’s only school looked down at them. Huge storks nested on the roofs and on the top of telephone polls.

They went by the grocery store, past the hotel – where guests who wanted to go skiing but could not afford to or did not want to stay in Bansko itself would check in during the winter months – and down a bumpy unpaved side road.  The Ris were renting from a woman named Spaska Antonova, a widow in her seventies who spoke no English, had been given their cover story, and was well paid to dissuade her from asking any more questions. She met them at the curb.  She and her children – a tall son with thick curly hair and a daughter with a round freckled face – came out to help them unload their car.  They were introduced as Simeon and Ana. Simeon was the younger of the two, in his mid-to-late twenties.  Ana was, judging by appearances, probably a little older than Jacobi himself, and had a wedding ring on her finger.  

Spaska said, “dobre doshli!”

and Ana quickly translated.  “My mother says welcome.”

“Blagodaria,” Maxwell thanked her, shaking all their hands in turn and being hugged by their new landlady.  The children had opted for the more Westernly acceptable handshake.  Ana looked vaguely embarrassed on their mother’s behalf.  

“What she said,” Jacobi said jokingly before finding himself being hugged too.  That Eastern European affection. On mission to Russia people did that, too. It had been extremely funny to see the stiff and professional Warren Kepler pulled into a bear hug.

Maxwell had bristled in the hug but  smiled when Spaska pulled back to look at her with the affection of a grandmother. When she did the same to Jacobi his reaction was far less visceral than Maxwell’s.  Jacobi knew that Maxwell had to be the one to initiate contact.  She and Jacobi had hugged in the past, but always on Maxwell’s terms.  

Spaska said, “Pozvolete mi da vi pokazha svoya nov dom.”

“My mother would like to give you the tour,” said Ana.

“Let me help with your bags,” the son added.

Jacobi was careful which bag he chose to carry, picking the duffel  containing Maxwell's sniper rifle.  Maxwell took the one with their tactical equipment, a deceptively heavy bag that would raise questions.

They were staying in a house across the street from their landlady’s. It had a garden like every other home in the village seemed to. Grape vines wound around wooden beam roof projected over the sidewalk. Roses were in bloom along the side of the house.  Some kind of wheat was visible over the tall back fence.

 

“My mother makes her own rakia from those grapes,” Simeon said. Jacobi had had the Serbian equivalent on a previous mission to the neighboring country his first year with Goddard and knew from the similarity in the name that it was the fruit brandy found throughout the Balkans. “We have some for you, but I warn you it’s very strong. The last foreigners who stayed here couldn’t handle it.”

“My family used to make moonshine,” Maxwell said. “I should be fine. Joss might not,” she elbowed Jacobi playfully in the ribs.

“This is basically moonshine,” Simeon assured them.  

Jacobi couldn’t help but wonder if what Maxwell said was true. What _was_ true, what he had seen first hand, was that for such a small woman, Maxwell could hold her alcohol extremely well.  She could drink him under the table.  And she was from the middle of nowhere.  Perhaps more nowhere than this village.  The kind of place where moonshine was a staple.  But he doubted a pastor would stand for that kind of thing...would he?  Half-Ashkenazi Jewish by heritage and raised utterly Jewish religiously, Jacobi didn’t know much about Christianity beyond what American culture had taught him and even less about whatever obscure sect it was in which Maxwell had been raised.  Just that her father was a pastor.

She spoke very rarely about her family, displaying her obvious trauma in the opposite way Jacobi did his. He’d spilled perhaps too much to Maxwell, but Maxwell rarely said _anything_ about her family to Jacobi.  He could count all the facts he knew about the Maxwell clan on his fingers.  He knew she had a lot of siblings, both brothers and sisters.  Her father and brothers went hunting a lot.  She used to play with her younger brother’s BB gun. She often referred to her father with the distant “Pastor Maxwell.”  She hadn’t spoken to any of them since she left for MIT on a full scholarship.  And now, that her brother played with GI Joes and her sisters played with dolls.

The house was small but comfortable.  They had passed homes with outhouses and they had passed homes that would not have looked out of place on any street in Cape Canaveral.  Outside of Bansko there was an eclectic aesthetic to Bulgaria, at least all of it that they’d seen.  Modern and old.  Holdovers from the Eastern Bloc stuck between buildings far older and far newer.  Even some of the individual houses were a sort of patchwork of brick in different patterns and of different manufacture. Most commonly houses were stereotypically Balkan, single-color walls, typically white, one or two storeys, terra cotta tile roofs at a slant, windows without shutters.  Their new home was one of these, neither especially old nor new.

Inside, the front hall had the kitchen on one side and a living room on the other.  There was what could be a dining room behind.  Upstairs were the bedroom and bathroom on opposite sides of the hall and an empty guest room beside the furnished master bedroom.

They were given this brief grand tour, then left to unpack. Jacobi was already excited at the promise of rakia and banitsa, the latter being cheese with whipped egg between two layers of phyllo dough.  On that same Serbian mission he had eaten burek, that country’s equivalent. He planned on stockpiling the banitsa and fresh cheese from the nearby farms. Balkan food was largely dairy and carbs, which was absolutely perfect insofar as Jacobi was concerned.  Especially the former.  

Once they were left alone, Maxwell locked the door and drew the curtains, taking precautions Jacobi doubted anyone else in such a small village would.  They took the bags to the bedroom. They checked every inch of the house for bugs.  No one should know they were there, but years in the field and a healthy regard for rules made Jacobi check anyway. It was reflex at this point.

There was one bed in the house, but this wouldn’t be the first time the two had to share one.  The last time they did so they were in a hostel in the mountains of Afghanistan, stuck with a single bed between the two of them.  Neither one had actually minded, the altitude meant they snuggled together for warmth.  The biggest issue Jacobi had sharing a bed with Maxwell was that she hogged the blankets, wrapping herself up in them.

There was nothing romantic or sexual about sharing a bed.  Maxwell wasn’t the first SI-5 agent with whom he had to do this. He had to pretend to be married to other SI-5 agents on other undercover missions.  Tight spaces had demanded he share a bed with Major Kepler himself in the past. (Kepler slept as unmoving as a corpse, but he was extremely easy to rouse, Jacobi had gotten very creative threats for his snoring when it kept his CO awake.)  It was easier with Maxwell than other people even if pretending to be married to her was, in some ways, far harder.  They were best friends, platonically tied to the core, but closer than any lover could ever hope to be.  Jacobi felt a smug superiority over romantic couples who needed to constantly convince each other of their love.  Jacobi and Maxwell knew what they were, even if they didn’t have a word for it.  

Maxwell momentarily tossed herself onto the bed, testing it.  

“How is it?”

“Soft!” Maxwell said.  “So much better than Afghanistan!”

“So it’s not a rock,” Jacobi answered.  

“Nope, not a rock.”

Once they were confident it was all clear, they began to unpack properly.  They removed the essentials from their bags.  Clothes for warm and cold weather, just in case.  Jacobi’s comb and Maxwell’s hairbrush and dozens of hair ties that would probably go missing before the month was up.  Jacobi pocketed his lighter, a Zippo with a black-metal grenade inlay on the side.  He hated traveling without it.  Toothbrushes, toothpaste, sniper rifle, floss, bullets, handguns, soap, Jacobi’s explosives kit, shampoo purchased at the airport, chemicals like glycerin, sulfuric and nitric acid, and caustic lime.  The bare necessities.

 

***

 

They sat in the kitchen eating the dinner Spaska had prepared for them, a welcome bread they were instructed to dip into a spice concoction before eating, and a dish called gyuveche or hodgepodge, various vegetables and beef slow-cooked in their juices and too much oil, finally topped with a well-cooked egg.  Both were delicious and Maxwell and he went for seconds.  

As they ate they went over the dossier: Vasil Ivanov, age 45, idiot and professor of chemistry at the New University of Sofia.  He had concocted a rocket engine that would make chlorine trifluoride a viable fuel source; a unique containment unit and oxidizing formula.  He had come up with the idea years ago and had been obsessing over it ever since, according to GF’s sources. His idea was to use it for civilian crafts, everyone else saw the military applications.  The US, China, Russia, North Korea, and several military contractors had already expressed interest along with Goddard Futuristics, all offering exorbitant amounts of money for it.  

Ivanov didn’t move.  

Cutter gave up doing things the hard way.  Deliberations were finished and the mission was handed over to SI-5.  You never wanted your name to go to the SI-5.  It meant you didn’t have much time left. The SI-5 did Cutter’s dirtiest jobs, did them quickly, did them thoroughly, and they did them with extreme prejudice.

The only reason Ivanov hadn’t already been murdered and robbed was that he wasn’t quite finished yet.  He’d gone public with the theory before he actually had a functional model.  So that was what he was doing now.  He’d locked himself in a makeshift lab in the middle of the Razlog Valley, in the Blagoevgrad Province, a safe distance from the town that gave the valley its name.  But he’d put out a message to other scientists for help, not realizing that identities could very easily be faked, even with today’s constant fact-checking.  Jacobi had been dozens of people in his time with GF, all of them seemingly as real as Daniel Jacobi had ever been.  In his first year with Goddard Futuristics they’d faked his death.  They did that for everyone who worked in the Strategic Intelligence Division.  Ever since then, in the public world, he was Jason Jang who worked for NASA.  After all, Daniel Jacobi died in San Francisco in 2011.  How could he be in Cape Canaveral in 2014?  Jason Jang had never had his identity questioned, there had never been a problem.

Now he was Joss Ri, physicist.  He’d been married to Tessa (nee Ruben) for two years now.  They even had the marriage license to prove it.  A license that would be destroyed when the mission was over.  They might even destroy the rings now on Jacobi and Maxwell’s fingers.  It wouldn’t surprise him.  Cutter seemed to have infinite resources.  But then again, he also never wasted them.  

The engagement ring Maxwell wore was the most ostentatious thing Jacobi had ever seen grace her skin.  She occasionally wore the necklace she now did, a microchip with a little hole drilled in it through which to loop a cheap chain.  The jewelry was so out of character Jacobi had once asked her about it.  They were at Lucky Panda, a Chinese restaurant they often went to together.  Over their lo mein Maxwell had pulled off her sweatshirt and the necklace had snagged.  She grumbled as she yanked the thing free before pulling the hood over her head.  

“Why do you wear that?” he asked pointing at the necklace with his chopsticks.

“The necklace?” Maxwell clarified.

“No, the sweatshirt,” Jacobi said sarcastically, “I don’t understand how being cold works.”

“It was from the first computer I ever built,” Maxwell explained, ignoring his sarcastic comment as if he’d just said “yes.”

“Really?”

“Yep, it’s part of the mother board.  I built it from spare parts I found being thrown away and stuff from the hardware store.  I was so proud of it!” Maxwell smiled fondly at the memory.

“I get it.  You should have seen how excited I was when I made my first IED out of my family’s rice cooker.  Did it work?”

“Barely!” Maxwell laughed.  “But that didn’t mean I wasn’t happy with it.”

“You built it from garbage, I’d say ‘barely’ is pretty good,” he said and meant it.  “How old were you?”

“Nine, I think. Maybe eight. It was this huge ugly thing, too.  I couldn’t get it online or anything that sophisticated.  Honestly, I was just proud I got it to turn on.  I started teaching myself programming on that damn thing, it ran DOS.  It eventually short circuited and died.  This was one of the only chips that didn’t completely fry.”

That conversation was a year ago.  They’d gotten so much closer since then.  Inseparable.  That was why Jacobi was always glad to be sent on missions with Maxwell.  They were paired up a lot.  Within SI, they were a team of great renown, Major Kepler’s favorite agents for good reason. They had a stellar reputation as operatives, even if their personal reputations were a little more changeable.

Tomorrow Ivanov would meet his new coworker over lunch far from the lab to make sure Joss Ri was on the up-and-up. He would absolutely appear to be.


	2. Bugs and Banitsa

 

“Ready for your first day of work, darling?” asked Maxwell sarcastically as she entered the kitchen.  She was dressed in her pajamas, a big t-shirt ( _ No, I will not fix your computer _ emblazoned on the front) and sweatpants, her curly brown hair hanging loosely and messily around her back.  

Jacobi had his mouth full of banitsa.  He shrugged, swallowed, and answered just as dryly, “Oh absolutely, snookums.”  He was actually pretty excited to meet with Ivanov and begin working on the propellant. But something darker was weighing heavily just behind his excitement. Something he couldn’t quite name. A sorrow. A darkness.  A weight in his chest.  He knew the cause. He knew why he was experiencing this emotional gut punch. It was coming up. An anniversary. The Anniversary.

Maxwell went on tiptoes to get a mug down from the cabinet.  She took one of the Nescafé packets they had bought in Bansko and bitterly shook it, unhappy with having to settle for instant coffee. The kettle was on and bubbling, ready for use. Maxwell added water to her mug, shook the packet again for good measure, and poured the brown crystals into the cup.  “Where’d you get that from?” asked Maxwell nodding to the plate of elegantly and perfectly cut pastry.  

“Spaska,” Jacobi answered before taking another bite.  He tried to hide the emotional roller coaster he had been in since he woke up this morning. He would gladly talk about the joy he was feeling but that darkness...that wasn’t something he wanted to address.  Daniel Jacobi did not wear uncomfortable feelings well.  Bitterness, yes; it fit him like a glove. Sorrow, anxiety, fear?  No. He tried to hide them even from the likes of Maxwell. So he tried to focus only on the positive and ignore the date looming ever closer. The day that changed everything. The day that for two years ruined his life and robbed two men of theirs. “She came by a few minutes ago,” he said, ignoring his emotions.

“And you’ve already stuffed your face,” Maxwell said flatly, indicating the less-than-half piece left on his plate.  

Jacobi’s dark eyes followed her gaze, then he looked back at her, his expression and voice deadpan as he answered, “Yeah.”

Maxwell snorted and pulled up a chair and took a piece for herself, sitting across from him.  She took a bite and had the reaction Jacobi expected.  “Mm,” she said pleasantly, “that is really good.”

“I know,” Jacobi said.  He probably liked it more than Maxwell, because Jacobi loved cheese more than anyone else he’d ever met in his life.  Part of it he thought was from spending a lot of his childhood in Wisconsin where there was no shortage of good cheese.  Most of it he thought was simply that cheese was delicious. He hadn’t had much Bulgarian cheese yet, but he knew it was plentiful.  There were cows and farms everywhere.  Early that morning a herd of cows wandered past the house, released during the day, returning home in the evening, their bells jangling around their necks.  

“What time are you meeting Ivanov?” asked Maxwell before crunching another bite.  

“Noon,” Jacobi answered.  It was 9 AM now.  A rooster had woken him up a few hours ago which, combined with the fact that Maxwell was hogging the blanket, made Jacobi rise uncharacteristically early.  

“Are you all ready?” Maxwell asked.

“I’m ready.  How are my fake credentials?”

“Still there,” Maxwell said, referring to the fake webpage on the site for the fake laboratory his fake identity worked for. It was yet another front of Goddard Futuristics that would disavow all knowledge of Ri if the authorities ever went looking for him. If things got bad enough, if the heat was too intense, Curie Labs would disappear altogether. Jacobi had made Ri seem more real by putting together a paper over the last month, revealing nothing secret but certainly things of value. GF experiments from their rocketry department.  It hadn't been published, not really, but it had been peer reviewed by other fake scientists.  Joss Ri was as real as Daniel Jacobi. Perhaps more so.

“And I’ve got my passport and driver’s license,” Jacobi said. “What do you want to do until I have to go?”

“Video games?” Maxwell asked.

“Sounds good,” Jacobi replied.

So they did, playing a  _ Titanfall _ emulator until 11 AM.

When the time came Jacobi changed quickly into the business casual clothing he had been provided. Below the button-down shirt, Jacobi attached a microphone to his chest so Maxwell would be able to listen to the entirety of his conversation with Ivanov. When he emerged from his bedroom he held out his arms to the side, palms up, for Maxwell’s approval.

“What do you think?  Do I look like an adult?” he asked wryly.

“Shockingly,” Maxwell said with a nod. “Major Kepler would be proud.”  

“Oh, shut up,” said Jacobi. But he flushed slightly. Maxwell knew just how much Kepler’s approval meant to him, even if she teased him about it.  Maxwell smirked as he playfully hit her on the arm.

Maxwell passed him the nearly microscopic speaker he would wear in his ear. She put on her equipment, a microphone that clipped to her shirt and a wireless headset. “Testing?” she said.

Feedback screeched in his ear sending him reeling back against the coffee table. “You're too close!”

“Sorry, sorry!” Maxwell apologized.  He rubbed his ear grumpily and she added, “It wasn’t  _ that _ bad, don’t be such a baby!”

He scowled, “ _ You _ wear the inner ear speaker next time, then.”

She tested the mic again. Jacobi gave her the okay sign, the CRE symbol that he understood, it was how he and the other ballistics guys communicated when they wore their huge and heavy ear protectors and it was reflex at this point.  “Read you loud and clear.”  Maxwell took the headset from her neck and put them to her ears. Jacobi tested his mic, invisible under his shirt. “Testing.”

“We’re good on this end, too,” Maxwell said.

There were two other devices. One was Maxwell's smartphone that would record the conversations both between Jacobi and Maxwell and Jacobi and Ivanov. (They uploaded to Kepler’s server daily.  And he could forward them as necessary to Mr. Cutter himself.  Jacobi and Maxwell were not allowed anywhere near Cutter’s server.  They’d never successfully gotten into Kepler’s — although that hadn’t stopped them from trying every time the Major’s back was turned — the security around Cutter’s must have been unimaginable.  They weren’t even allowed to send him anything directly.  It all went through the Major first, even though he was presently on mission himself.)  

The other was a special bug they would plant on Ivanov.

Jacobi walked to the meeting place, the nearby restaurant.  The town wasn’t large enough for him to bother taking the car.  He told a waitress he was looking for someone and asked if anyone was expecting company.  Her English was heavily accented but it was far better than his Bulgarian, which was why he didn’t even attempt it.

“There is a man looking for you. He is over there.” She pointed to a small man with graying hair sitting at a lonely table.  He was reading something off a tablet with extreme interest, largely ignoring the tarator soup in front of him. “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

“Just a coffee’s fine for now,” Jacobi answered. The waitress excused herself.  Jacobi approached the table. “Dr. Ivanov?” he asked before taking his seat.  

The man glanced up.  “Dr. Ri?”  Ivanov motioned Jacobi to his seat.

“Yes.  It’s nice to meet you,” said Jacobi, offering his hand.  

They shook hands and Jacobi subtly set the bug onto Ivanov. It was the size of a flea and burrowed like a tick, but Ivanov would probably not feel anything at all. As Jacobi retracted his hand Maxwell chimed in his ear, “We’re good. I can hear him through mic two.”  The bug would last approximately 48 hours before it fell apart and dropped off piece by piece, but that would be long enough to get a feeling for Ivanov’s habits.

Jacobi obviously didn’t respond. He kept up his conversation with the scientist.

“It’s important that we meet here.  In public, where it’s loud.  There are a lot of Gypsies who come here, they make noise,” said Ivanov.  Jacobi said nothing about the inherent prejudice of that statement, but internally he scoffed.  He may have been a terrible person, but at least he could say he wasn’t racist.  “I want to make sure you aren’t…well, a lot of people want what I am working on. Private companies want to buy it off me. But I know they want it for military purposes.  I know what they’re after,” he continued.  

“Huh,” Jacobi said as if he was surprised to hear it.  His face was quietly sympathetic, in no way betraying that he came from one of those companies that had put forward a bid and that they indeed wanted to use it for missiles.  Jacobi himself was actually extremely excited to get his hands on it for exactly that reason.  He had spent the ride from Canaveral sketching new designs on his Legal Pad.  He’d even dreamt about it last night.  The things he could do if it was really what Ivanov promised it would be…if he’d really found a way to make chlorine trifluoride usable, reasonable…the possibilities were potentially endless.  He could create even larger missiles, faster than anything he had now, his  _ Project: Fuck You Right Now _ might actually get literally off the ground after a year on the shelf.  This was a man sitting on something that made Jacobi feel as giddy as he did as a kid when he first discovered how to make a flamethrower or an IED.

And there was the fact it would be  _ safe _ . As cavalier as Jacobi seemed, safety was major concern.  At one point in his life he might not have cared, but he’d seen too much for that still to be true.  There was an inherent danger in ballistics that could not be avoided, but minimizing it meant the difference between life and the most horrific death. A death he had seen with his own eyes.

There was an expectant pause. Maxwell snorted in his ear piece.  “Say something more than that, Nitramide.” They used their call signs over the comms.  

“I’m sorry to hear that,” he added.

“You should be.  The things they could do with my system…you don’t even want to think about it,” said Ivanov with a shake of his head.  

Jacobi  _ absolutely _ wanted to think about it.  He’d been thinking of little else since he was assigned to this mission.  Inside his ear Maxwell began laughing, laughing so hard she had to muffle it to keep from being overheard.  Jacobi imagined her shoving her face into one of the pillows from the couch, gasping for breath.  Jacobi hated that he couldn’t respond to her. He’d much rather be talking to Maxwell than this pacifist who did not realize what he had.  

“I bet,” he said instead.

“So, I’m sure you don’t mind showing me your paperwork in person,” Ivanov said.  

“Yeah, no problem.  Here you go,” he passed various documents and certifications across the table. Jacobi had already sent ahead the fake files, but he had no problem showing the perfect — but phony — passport, IDs, résumé, and assorted credentials. All were indistinguishable from the real thing. Ivanov flipped through them, eyes darting, probably not taking in any of it, nor needing to. It was all about appearances, very few people realized exactly how easy it was to become someone else.  No one ever gave things like this more than a cursory glance.  Do you look like your picture?  Yes.  Was the logo right?  Yep.  Did the phony watermark match the real thing?  Absolutely.  Even if he pried, everything was the way it was supposed to be.  

He passed them back to Jacobi apparently satisfied, “I’m very curious about your work in rockets.”

“My specialty,” Jacobi said. It wasn’t a complete lie. But the rockets he worked on were missiles used to destroy enormous targets for GF, or the rockets used to get such weapons into orbit.  He could design and build a rocket engine, but only because he knew how to get an anti-satellite weapon or an orbital ballistics missile off planet. He was good at designing big weapons. The biggest Things that Broke Other Things. He’d been doing it for years. And he supposed that could transfer to more boring purposes.

“It seems so.  I liked your papers very much.  Interesting theories.”

They weren’t theories, but Goddard hadn’t revealed the projects just yet.  On the surface Goddard was benevolent, ubiquitous, perhaps one of the kindest companies on Earth, but that was just the surface.  There was so much more no one but the Strategic Intelligence Division saw, the rest of the terrible iceberg.  

“Thank you,” Jacobi said.  “Who else will we be working with?”

“Two students of mine and Dr. Bryant.  She arrived yesterday. You two will help each other adjust I'm sure.”

“Dr. Bryant?” Jacobi asked, he tried very hard not to betray his concern on his face.  He took a sip of his coffee and winced.  It had been made from instant crystals.  He wasn’t as much of a coffee snob as Maxwell, but while it wasn’t intolerable, he had expected  _ actual  _ coffee in a restaurant.  It was more shock than disgust.  

“She had the same reaction to the coffee you just did,” chuckled Ivanov.  “I don’t understand why you Americans are so obsessed with coffee beans.”

“I’m sorry,” Jacobi said with a little more force, “who is Dr. Bryant?”

“Oh, did I not mention?  She’s the other foreign scientist I brought in. Also American. Layla Bryant, a chemist out of Washington, D.C.,” said Ivanov.   

“Crap,” Maxwell muttered in Jacobi’s ear.  “Another one.”

They were in different fields.  Ri was supposed to be a physicist specializing in aerospace engineering, and that might save them.  With luck she wouldn’t recognize that Jacobi’s Joss Ri did not exist. With luck she would just accept Jacobi as Ri without complaint. But Jacobi hated depending on luck.  In his experience, only  _ skill   _ brought success.  Only  _ skill  _ kept you and your team employed and  _ alive.  _  In Jacobi’s experience, luck ran out, skill did not.

Even if the coffee was instant, the food was good.  A bean soup and a plate of lamb with rice flavored with the offal. Despite the fact that it caused some confusion, Jacobi managed to get another plate of lamb wrapped up to take home to his “wife.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Maxwell said when Jacobi presented it to her. He had already taken off his mic and receiver.  Maxwell had one ear of her headset on, listening, presumably, to Ivanov as he drove back to his lab. On her computer the sound readout rose and fell, the only indication to Jacobi that anything was going on.

“I know, I’m the best friend you could ask for,” he said with a smirk, “Try it. It’s really good.”

“I’m shocked you didn’t come back with more cheese,” Maxwell said.  “You were so excited about it on the flight over.”

“I did, it’s in the fridge already,” he answered.  He’d stuffed a bag full of banitsa from the bakery across from the restaurant.  “I’m going to hit a farm on my way home from work, get some fresh cheese.”

“Really?” Maxwell asked.

“Why not?” Jacobi shrugged.

Maxwell removed the plastic-wrap from the paper plate, “Don’t let too many people see you.”  The lamb practically melted onto the fork and the rice was flavorful. Maxwell made an approving noise.

“Told you,” he said.  

“I believed you,” Maxwell assured him.

“We should talk about this Bryant thing,” Jacobi said flopping onto the couch beside her.  

“Yeah,”  Then she wrinkled her nose, “Ugh. He’s listening to the entirety of Master of Puppets.”

“I love that album!”  

“I know. That's why you should take this shift,” Maxwell offered him the headset.  

As Jacobi adjusted it to fit his head and aligned it with his ears, he heard Ivanov greeting someone. “Dobre den.”

“Aw, I missed it,” he complained.  

“Oh, damn,” said Maxwell sarcastically.

“So, Bryant,” Jacobi said.   On the headset a door closed, Ivanov sighed to himself, then went mostly quiet.  A radio or TV turned on, a broadcast in Bulgarian.  

“She could be a massive problem,” Maxwell said.  “Or she might not be an issue at all.”

“She’s not a physicist, she might just buy my identity.  It’s not like she and Joss Ri would have worked together. And why would she bother looking me up?”

“You would be fine even if she did,” Maxwell reminded him.

“It worked on Ivanov,” Jacobi agreed.

“Right,” Maxwell answered.  “We’re not in danger yet.”  There was a long pause.  Maxwell jabbed at her rice thoughtfully as if she was trying to think of what to say.  Then she spoke up again, “But it’s not Bryant that’s bothering you.”  

“What?” Jacobi looked at her.  She met his gaze. “Of course it is.”  But of course it wasn’t. Apparently he hadn’t been hiding that creeping darkness as well as he had hoped.   “How...how did you know?”

“You stopped talking about the engine.  When we were assigned the mission you were excited as Hell.   _ Obnoxiously  _ excited.  Then this morning you were just...meh.”  

“I’m still excited,” he assured her.

“But something’s on your mind.”

Something  _ was  _ on his mind.  A safer rocket fuel.

Could that have saved them?  If they had used a different propellant would that have stopped it from happening?  Would they still be alive?  The two men that died in the Air Force. That was the Anniversary barreling towards him. In exactly 10 days was the five-year Anniversary of their deaths.  Five years since the day that cost him everything.  

The fifth anniversary of his biggest mistake.

_ No!   _  It wasn’t his fault.  

But it  _ could _ have been.  

He never found out what actually went wrong.  

A flash of light.  A wave of intense heat.  The loudest sound Jacobi had ever heard.  They didn’t even have time to scream.  They were just…gone.  Two good and decent guys; in a fair world they would have outlived Jacobi.  The Anniversary was coming up and he was working on an engine designed to be safer.  Jacobi’s stars were aligning in just the wrong way and it hit him in the chest like a sledgehammer.

“Tell me what’s wrong.” Maxwell insisted.

“Maxwell—”

“Daniel, please!” It was more of a demand than a plea.  “I have your back!  You know I have your back!  You can tell me anything!”

And it came rushing out of him uncontrollably. “What if this could have stopped it from happening?!”

“What?” Maxwell asked, confused.  Then realization dawned across her face.  Her wide eyes went even larger, her voice fell.  “Oh my God, Jacobi, I—the Incident…I didn’t even think…I should have realized…I’m sorry…”

“In 10 days it’ll be the Anniversary. I got fired before the inquest was anywhere near finished,” he said, staring at the floor.  “I don’t know what went wrong.”  He let out a shaking breath he didn’t realize he was holding.  “I don’t know what went wrong and I’ve been trying to figure it out for  _ five goddamn years _ .  Ever since the day it happened.  It’s always in the back of my mind.  What the Hell went wrong?  It could have been the engine.  It could have been that the oxide wore off or that the fuel canister was compromised.  It could have been something that Ivanov’s figured out a way around.  Chlorine trifluoride is one of the most dangerous chemicals I can think of, but he may have found a way to make it safer than anything I’ve  _ ever  _ done.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Jacobi,” Maxwell said, “you  _ know  _ that.”

“ _I_ _ don’t _ _know that!_ ” Jacobi snapped. “I tell myself that, but I don’t know!”

There was a pause.  “You can’t change the past,” Maxwell said quietly.

“Thanks,” said Jacobi, sarcastically.

“Shut up and listen.” she said sternly while giving his shoulder a reassuring squeeze.  “You can’t change the past, but you can shape the future.”  

He glanced up at her.  Maxwell was looking very seriously at him.  She believed so much in the future.  She so firmly believed the best was yet to come.  It was always coming.  Tomorrow would be better than today.  It was comforting, her unyielding optimism.  He needed it, because he never had that confidence himself.  

“You can’t save them, but you can save your team  _ now.   _ When we get back to Goddard with this engine…think of everything you’ll be able to do,” Maxwell said.

Jacobi smiled at her.  “You’re right.”

“I usually am,” she answered. “And in 10 days, we’ll break out that rakia. On one condition.”

“What’s that?” Jacobi asked.

“We’re not going to be moping about the past.  We’ll be celebrating the future.”

 


	3. Lab and Liar

 

The next morning Jacobi followed Ivanov’s handwritten directions to the laboratory the scientist had MacGyvered for himself. It was out in the middle of a field surrounded by fields, nothing nearby but a few seemingly unincorporated farms far from the deserted road, all but empty to the distant peaks of the Rila Mountains. There was a single power plant down the road, but the tall smokestacks weren’t coughing up any gray clouds, leading Jacobi to wonder if the plant had been converted or abandoned.  The lab had once been some kind of storehouse, probably until very recently. The fields immediately on either side were disused and overgrown with wild flowers. Beyond that were fields of sunflowers and freshly sheared wheat to a distant treeline. This morning a plume of jet-black smoke bloomed in the distance where Jacobi knew they were burning their harvested fields. He grew up in the Midwest. His father was a recruiter, which meant they moved around a lot.  Sometimes they lived in cities, sometimes in the suburbs, and sometimes it was in small farming towns. The process cleared the old crop and restored nutrients to the soil for the new one, but it had to be done in very specific conditions and very, very carefully.

He reached the chainlink fence around the compound. He pulled out his phone (not his GF smartphone, a device that didn’t have a traceable number, but an innocuous iPhone that would be tossed into an incinerator when the mission was done).  He texted to be let in.  After a few minutes a lanky young man with dark brown hair and square glasses appeared. He looked to be a little younger than Maxwell and waved to Jacobi who waved back. The young man undid the combination lock and Jacobi cursed that he wasn’t quite close enough to see the numbers. Next time.  Unless Ivanov gave him the combination himself.   The laboratory complex consisted of a parking lot made by cars running down the plant life until it stopped growing there, a huge warehouse, and a second, smaller building that must have once been an office. 

Pulling in, Jacobi spotted a shaggy tan-colored dog that abandoned its breakfast to watch Jacobi’s car.  It was behind a second fence, and Jacobi assumed it was a guard dog to be let out when no one was in the lab.  He wondered how effective it was.  It didn’t growl at Jacobi’s car but returned to its meal, apparently satisfied with Jacobi’s appearance.  Either it wasn’t good at its job or its meal distracted it.  Jacobi assumed he wouldn’t need to worry about it.  If the dog proved to be the best guardian in the world, it seemed food – and not necessarily a grenade – would fix  _ that  _ immediately.  Worst case scenario, he did have the latter. 

Jacobi parked in the dirt lot and was greeted by the young man.  “Dr. Ri, right?  Nice to meet you,” he said without waiting for a response.  “I’m Stojan Bogdanov.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Jacobi said.

“I read your paper. It’s brilliant!  I’m not studying physics but I still enjoyed it!”

“Thanks,” said Jacobi. Everything about Bogdanov screamed over-enthused grad student.

“I would love to hear about the research process!” he said excitedly. “And the experiments!” 

“Maybe over lunch,” Jacobi said unenthusiastically.  “Is the gang all here?” 

“Dr. Ivanov, Maria Badžo, and I just got here.  And that,” he pointed to a plain black sedan that was pulling into the lot, “looks like Dr. Bryant.”  Jacobi watched the car out of the tail of his eye as Stojan Bogdanov lead him toward the building.  

Jacobi turned his attention to the building and spotted three cameras before entering.  One was at the gate, one above the door, and one on the corner of the smaller of the two buildings.  They all swiveled on a timer. Immediately inside there was another camera trained on the door.  Jacobi glanced at it, it looked basic enough.  Maxwell would be able to hack the feed if/when it came to that, he was sure.  She could hack any camera.  He had the utmost faith in her abilities. Maxwell seemed to be able to coax a computer to do anything, and if she couldn’t, she always found a way around it.  Bogdanov continued to talk excitedly to Jacobi, mostly about the project and how glad he was to have a rocket scientist with them.  Jacobi wasn’t listening.  He gave a few “uh-huhs” to make it seem as if he was.  

Maria Badžo proved to be a tall woman probably in her early twenties. Her hair was thick and black, her skin was brown, her eyes were nearly as dark as Jacobi’s and heavily lashed, she wore her hair in a ponytail down her back, longer than Maxwell’s.  She wore dark makeup on her eyes, edged in perfect wings.  She didn’t seem to want to be distracted from her work.  She smiled lightly at Jacobi, professionally, a smile that would serve her well in the real world, friendly enough not to be rude but brisk enough to indicate she had better things to do.  She shook Jacobi’s hand firmly then returned to her calculations.  She nicely contrasted Bogdanov’s friendliness and excitement.  She was there to work and, however interested in her job she was, she kept it cool.  

Then Layla Bryant came in, clutching a travel mug in one hand, her bag slung over the opposite shoulder. She was on the smaller side, taller than Maxwell but shorter than Badžo.  She was dark skinned with curly black hair cropped close to her head. She wore an ear cuff and a thumb ring but no other jewelry.  She had a keloidal scar high on her bare arm, near the shoulder.  At its epicenter was a round mark that Jacobi would not mistake for anything else: that was a shot from a nine-millimeter bullet. A weird scar for a scientist to have.  Weird, but entirely possible; it just raised Jacobi’s eyebrows.

“Good morning, Dr. Bryant!  This is Dr. Ri,” said Bogdanov.

“Nice to meet you,” she said shaking his hand, she had a very strong grip.  “George Washington.” 

“Curie Labs,” Jacobi provided.

“Did I see you at the rocketry conference in Atlanta last year?” she asked.

“Maybe,” Jacobi answered.

“Do you mind if I borrow Dr. Ri?” asked Bogdanov, “I want to give him a tour.” 

“Go ahead,” said Bryant, unslinging her backpack onto her work station.  “It’ll be a short one.” 

“She’s right,” said Bogdanov almost apologetically.  “There’s not much to see – not yet, at least.” 

“Still, I’d like to know where everything is,” Jacobi told him.  He had his hands casually in his pockets, counting the Goddard Futuristics bugs he had to spread around the lab.  A tour would be the best way to plant them. He wasn’t miked, not today.  In a noisy place like a restaurant, Maxwell was not at risk of being overheard, but a lab could get quiet and any misstep could cost them everything.  Instead the two would communicate via phone when they needed to and Maxwell would monitor the bugs set up around the lab.  It would also come in handy when the bug they’d planted on Ivanov gave out.  

What he couldn’t plant during the tour he could place later, but the tour would allow him to scope out the best spots for the tiny listening devices.  Then, after placing them, he’d get a convenient call from his wife, something about what they wanted to do for dinner that evening, a coded message that Maxwell was getting the information she needed.  “Let’s go out tonight” meant that she was having trouble picking up one or more of the signals.  “Let’s stay in,” meant she was good.  Being shown around was also a good way to scope out security.  Ivanov had to have something up his sleeve if he wanted to keep people out, something more than being a few miles from the nearest tiny village.  More than a handful of security cameras and a guard dog that could be easily tricked and even more easily killed. 

“Well, this is our main room,” said Bogdanov gesturing around them.  It had a large work table set up, not a real lab table, which Ivanov probably abandoned when he left the New University of Sofia to work out here in Blagoevgrad Province.  To one side of the room were four small compartments created by office partitions; doors on three of them were closed, probably locked judging by the hardware. Inside the one open door he could see a lab table topped with various beakers, test tubes, and bunsen burners.  The equipment was mostly up to snuff, probably donated by the university. It wasn’t what Jacobi worked with every day at Goddard Futuristics but, then, nowhere on Earth was so well funded as a GF lab.  This, Jacobi assumed, would be  _ his _ lab, unless it belonged to the mysterious Ivanov, whom he had yet to see this morning.  The main room was dark, with windows high above their heads and round fluorescent lights dangling from the ceiling.  There were more office partitions opposite the door separating out another section of the warehouse.  There was a kitchenette along the far wall, opposite the cabinet containing the toxic chemicals and the little labs the scientists were using.  

There were several of these metal cabinets around the room, and, under the guise of investigating, Jacobi opened the nearest one.  “This is where you keep your chemicals?” he asked.  He had palmed one of the bugs when he removed his hand from his pocket and carefully placed it on the underside of the shelf as he opened an icebox containing a canister of chlorine and a copper container of chlorine trifluoride.  

“Yes, be careful!” Bogdanov said, closing the cabinet. The bug was sensitive enough to pick up conversations beyond the closed door.  One down, four to go.  

“Sorry,” Jacobi muttered apologetically.  He was actually angry at Ivanov.  That was not how you stored something as dangerous as chlorine trifluoride.  That was not how you handled it.  They were working with one of the most dangerous chemicals in the world, one of the most unstable, reactive, and  _ toxic  _ materials possible.  Sure, Ivanov said he had a way to make chlorine trifluoride usable without risking an explosion, but that didn’t mean they had the All Clear.  Jacobi should be wearing a gas mask at the very least to get this close to the stuff.  

Jacobi was a ballistics expert.  He had been one for close to a decade now.  He wouldn’t tolerate something like this in his lab.  He would have pitched a fit before pitching Ivanov himself out.  He knew it was probably less than three milliliters of the stuff and it was probably the only chlorine trifluoride in the entirety of Bulgaria, but it was the second most corrosive substance known to man.  If this was his lab he would be yelling right now.  But it wasn’t his lab.  And this all had to go smoothly.  It wouldn’t look good if the American physicist metaphorically blew up five minutes into his first day.  

“It’s alright,” said Bogdanov, leading Jacobi toward the office partitions, “just be careful next time.”  Jacobi silently grit his teeth.   _ Bogdanov _ had no place lecturing  _ Jacobi  _ about safety considering what Jacobi had just seen.  

Jacobi touched the closer side of the the gap between two partitions, leaving a bug on one side.  Three to go.  The separated room was substantially smaller than the lab itself, but it was large enough to act as a cramped storage space.  This had been divided into subsections, separated by cabinets and crates that may have come with the warehouse itself.  Here was the raw material for the engine casing and fins.  Here were the chips and computer parts to make the guidance system.  Here were valves and tanks and wires and pumps.  The basics to build any kind of rocket.  

“This is our supply room,” said Bogdanov unnecessarily.  

“What about the more hardcore stuff?”  asked Jacobi, he’d already inserted a bug inside one of the boxes as Bogdanov was talking, gesturing grandly around them.  

“Dr. Ivanov is keeping the…special…supplies locked up with him.  He’s very protective over the oxide and the containment system.” 

“Huh,” said Jacobi as if he was surprised.  

“You’ll see when you get your assignment,” Bogdanov said leerily.  He looked at Jacobi out of the tail of his eye and Jacobi wondered how paranoid Ivanov was.

“My ‘assignment’?” Jacobi repeated.  

“We are each working on a section of the project.  Nothing else.”  

“So everyone works separately,” Jacobi clarified.

“And we’re not allowed to show anyone else what we’re doing,” Bogdanov said darkly. 

“Really?” Jacobi asked.

“To keep things safe…” Bogdanov answered, trying to defend his teacher.  “There are a lot of people who want this.” 

_ “This just got way harder,”  _ Jacobi thought.

 

***

 

Jacobi paused by the main table.  He put the final bug on the underside.  But his fingers found something else.  He looked around, making sure no one was paying attention to him, and he ducked his head to investigate.   _ “What the Hell?”  _ he thought.  

There was another bug already there.  A larger one, less advanced than what GF had armed him with, but it was nothing to laugh at.  He recognized it immediately after three years under Major Kepler.  This was U.S. government stuff.  “ _ Dammit. _ ”

He glanced at Bryant in her compartment.  She was pulling down her gas mask, an M50 Joint Service General Purpose Mask, the kind Jacobi gave Maxwell for her 26 th birthday last month.  He watched her movements for a few seconds.  Nothing pegged her obviously as a CIA agent.  If she was armed she kept it as well hidden as Jacobi did himself.  But who else could it be?  The grad students were too young and too Bulgarian to be the American plants.  They’d known Ivanov at least a year, maybe two.  It had to be Bryant.  

His phone rang.  Maxwell, right on cue.  

“Joss?  I think we should stay in tonight.”

Well, at least  _ that _ was working.  He used the code that there was a problem on his end, “Sounds good, but let me call you back.” 

“Make sure it’s soon,” Maxwell answered.  

After showing Jacobi his station, Bogdanov went to get his teacher.  Ivanov seemed more anxious today than he had in the restaurant, perhaps from the change of scenery.  In one hand he carried a manilla folder which he quickly passed off to Jacobi.  “This is what you’ll be working on.  It is top secret.  You will not show it to anyone. Not your wife.  Not anyone in this room.  Not even a dog you see on the street.  Do you understand?”

“Yeah,” said Jacobi.  “I know what top secret means.”  And he did, probably far better than anyone in this room with the exception of Bryant. 

“You had better,” said Ivanov in that same brisk way he spoke in the restaurant.  He checked over Jacobi’s station quickly, saw nothing that seemed to interest him, and left again.  Bogdanov caught him at the warehouse door, they conversed briefly in Bulgarian, a few chemical names slipped in in English.  Bogdanov was violently shushed, several times.  Finally he shook his head, “yes” in Bulgaria “no” in the States.  “Dobre,” Ivanov said and he left.  

“What’s his deal?” Jacobi asked Bogdanov, stopping him as he jogged back to his workstation.  

“Stress,” Bogdanov said.  

Jacobi raised his eyebrows but said nothing.   _ “Stress, sure,”  _ he thought.  _ “And he doesn’t even know half of it.”  _

Once he was alone in his cubicle Jacobi opened the folder and laid flat the schematics.  They were essentially half-finished.  He thought of Bogdanov and Badžo.  Did they have the missing puzzle pieces or were they with Ivanov himself?  It could also be, as Ivanov correctly assumed, that Jacobi could put together an engine from memory without any more information.  Jacobi had been building propulsion systems for his various missiles for years.  They couldn’t get you to deep space – he couldn’t build a VX engine or anything close to that, nothing that would get you far out of the atmosphere – but he knew how to put a missile into orbit or launch one halfway across the country.  You needed to know a lot to be successful in ballistics and Jacobi sure as Hell was that.  He took pride in what he knew and what he could do.  He knew more than the basics and that was enough here.  

It was a biprop engine on a small scale.  It had an steel oxidizer tank, that was where the chlorine trifluoride would be stored before ignition. The fuel, Jacobi assumed, would be monomethylhydrazine, what they used to get the space shuttle into orbit ’way back when.  It was what they used to put things in orbit at GF, far cheaper and easier than something as powerful as a VX.  More fun, too.  Toxic, volatile, bigtime hypergolic; a good rocket engine, in Jacobi’s opinion, was one powered by the explosion of two extremely dangerous chemicals interacting.   _ Boom!   _ It was a beautiful thing.  It seemed Ivanov and he, at least to that extent, agreed.  

Really, though, he had no idea if the fuel would be MMH.  The beauty of chlorine trifluoride was that it could act as an oxidizer with almost anything.  It would be fast, efficient, and spectacular.  If it could be tamed.  The problem lay in how dangerous chlorine trifluoride was.  Highly toxic.  Corrosive to almost every known material on earth, including asbestos, glass, and skin.  Get enough on you and it caused skin to  _ ignite.   _ It burned through almost anything.  It was something Jacobi had always wanted to play with, but never really had the opportunity to, except on paper.  He had ideas not even Goddard was crazy enough to fund.  If it could be kept under some kind of control then it would be one of the best storable oxidizers in existence.  But  _ that  _ was a very big if.  Theoretically, if an oxide could be found to coat the inside of the tank that would not corrode before launch then it could be feasible.  That was  _ another _ big if.  But here Jacobi stood with that potential in front of him.  It was enough to make him practically giddy.  

Giddy, but as Maxwell saw, there was something darker there, too.  He thought back to those guys in the Air Force.  They were always in the back of his mind but they got more insistent as The Anniversary grew closer.  Nine days away and he could practically see them in front of him.  

Martinez and Fitzpatrick.  Jorge Martinez and Andrew “Andy” Fitzpatrick. 

Martinez had a wife named Sofia whom he always referred to as “my lovely wife.”  He had a picture of her on his desk. They had had a baby six months before It happened. He had at least a half dozen pictures of his daughter, too.  He had handed out cigars when he returned to work after she was born. Expensive cigars. He drank Earl Grey tea every day out of a large metallic thermos, nursing it over several hours in the morning. He hated coffee and ranted about it several times daily: too much caffeine. Tea’s caffeine was processed differently, which Jacobi was pretty sure even Martinez knew was bullshit. He was a nice guy, generous; he’d give you the shirt off his back if you needed it. He brought in lunch every day and always too much of it so he could share. He liked sharing, something a garbage disposal like Daniel Jacobi didn't understand in the least.

Jacobi was now older than Martinez would ever be. The day he turned 31, that thought had struck him hard in the chest, weighed heavily on him, and he wasn’t able to shake it for hours.

Then there was Fitzpatrick, the veteran, the oldest guy on the team. He used to make a point of that. Called them all “kid” or “whippersnapper” – even Jacobi who was essentially his boss.  Jacobi liked Fitzpatrick more than Martinez.  He was less aggressively kind with a dry sense of humor that Jacobi appreciated. He was obsessed with puzzles, crosswords and Sudoku. He used to do them every day before they ran tests. His last day he had been working on a Sunday New York Times puzzle out of a ragged book of crosswords he brought every single day.  He never finished it. It was halfway filled in in Fitzpatrick’s all-caps handwriting when Jacobi and the others, stunned and terrified, found it on his work station.  He wasn’t married.  He had a “roommate” named David and there was an unspoken understanding that he was gay.  He’d lived with the other man for close to a decade when Fitzpatrick died.  

Sometimes Jacobi thought about Sofia and David, usually close to the Anniversary itself.  He didn’t know what romance was like. He didn’t know what that feeling was having never experienced it himself, nor did he think he was missing out on anything. It seemed dull and saccharin, even forced and uncomfortable. But he  _ did _ have a relationship that mattered to him. Mattered more than perhaps any other.  He had only known Maxwell a year and change (But then Martinez had only known Sofia for two years before he died).   If Maxwell was taken from him he didn’t know what he would do.    He couldn’t imagine going through life the way he used to, without her there.  Maybe it was like that for them.  They had to live that nightmare of being utterly alone again after having known what it was like to have  _ someone _ .  To have a partner.  

But worst was when he thought about Martinez and Fitzpatrick themselves.  

_ “Everything okay on your end, Jacobi?” _

_ “This is never gonna work, kiddo.” _

Those were the last things they had said to him. The last things they ever said.  Fitzpatrick had given his grimly ironic statement just seconds before it happened. Seconds. Jacobi had just started his response, “I love your optimism” – although he never got out more than the “I” – when the blast hit them. 

Then everything was gone.

Not only Martinez and Fitzpatrick but everything Jacobi had. His entire life was torn apart as thoroughly as if Jacobi had been in the blast himself.  It all stopped for two years.  He was as good as dead. They were the most miserable years of his life, even if they were followed by the greatest. Pride had kept him from even looking for a job below the position he held in the Air Force.  That pitch black mark on his record kept that from being possible. He’d lived off his meager savings, doling out exactly the amount it would cost to drink himself to death. It seemed the most logical move. He fell lower than rock bottom. Just when he was on the verge of losing what little he had, just before he was evicted on that dark Anniversary three years ago, Warren Kepler appeared and pulled him up again. Kepler chose him. Kepler  _ saved _ him.  Kepler gave him what he never thought he would (or even could) get: a second chance. And Jacobi thought, Jacobi hoped, he made Kepler proud. He knew he passed his performance reviews with flying colors; his psych exams – whatever they said – were always good enough to keep him in the field.  But Kepler’s personal opinion of him mattered more than even Mr. Cutter’s.  When Kepler called him his right hand, when he gave him a pat on the back, when he praised him, nothing made Jacobi feel more fulfilled.  He may never have made his father proud, but he did Kepler.  

Different Anniversaries, different years, different thoughts overtook him. Sometimes he thought about his own loss, but since joining Goddard, since getting his life back, he thought more often of Martinez and Fitzpatrick.  

“ _ This one’s for you guys, _ ” he thought.

  
  


***

  
  


At 13:00, Bogdanov glanced at his watch and let out a low whistle before saying, “Porchiefca!  Break time!  Obyad!  Lunch time!”  

  
The four of them gathered together around the central work table.  Jacobi had a sandwich, more cheese than meat, that he had prepared that morning.  Badžo had a small container of soup that she heated up in the microwave.  Bogdanov had some bread topped with melted cheese and olives and a yogurt drink into which he sprinkled a little salt.  Bryant had what were clearly leftovers, a bit of cold steak and rice in a Tupperware container.  As soon as Bryant dropped down onto her stool, Jacobi turned his attention to her, like a hawk would a sparrow. If she was a CIA spook he wanted to either shake her or learn everything he could before he handed things over to Maxwell to find the rest.   
  
And Maxwell would.  She would find out everything.

Jacobi took a bite of his sandwich and spoke through his full mouth, “So, Bryant, how’s DC treating you?” 

“Fine,” she answered with a shrug.   
  
“Who’s the department head there again?” 

“Michael King,” she said.   
  
“Good guy?  Give you any trouble?” 

“No. We stay out of each other’s way. I don’t deal with him much.” 

“I’ll bet,” Jacobi said nebulously. She frowned in confusion at him but he didn’t offer anything more on the subject. “You do your PhD there?” 

“Yes.”   
  
“Under who?  I know a guy who went there.”  He didn’t offer her any names.  He liked trying to slip her up.  He didn’t even pretend it was because he wanted to prove she was an agent.  It was just because he wanted to fluster her, to mess with her, for no other reason than that he enjoyed it.  If Maxwell were here they'd be exchanging private looks and taking turns like a pack of wolves on the hunt.   
  
“Jeremy Cohen,” she answered. “What about you, Dr. Ri?  Where did you go to school?”   
  
“Cambridge,” Jacobi answered nonchalantly. He’d been given a cover story and he was very good at sticking to it. He had done this enough times. But maybe she had, too.  “I worked with Travis Parker.” “I’ve never met him.”  
  
“Nice guy,” Jacobi shrugged.   
  
“Dr. Ri, I was hoping to discuss your paper…” said Bogdanov hopefully.   
  
“In a second,” Jacobi said slightly irritably. He had no interest in talking to this kid. He had no interest in any of these people with the exception of Bryant. 

And,  _ obviously,  _ Ivanov – but after he handed off Jacobi’s assignment, the man disappeared.  It wasn’t that Jacobi wanted to know him personally, Ivanov was going to die.  Jacobi and Maxwell were going to kill him.  The last thing he really wanted to do was get close to the man.  That would complicate things unnecessarily.  He needed to get Ivanov’s plans ASAP and worming his way into the man’s heart would probably be the easiest way to do it.

In other words, Bryant was the enemy now.  Ivanov was just the target.  Keep your enemies closer.  

“Any other questions, Ri?” asked Bryant with a warm smile to Bogdanov who grinned, a little embarrassed.    
  
“Yeah,” said Jacobi.  “What’s your speciality again?”   
  
“Rocket propellants, obviously,” she scoffed, matching his smugness with icy disdain.   
  
“Of course.  So what are you usually working with?” Jacobi pressed.   
  
“This and that,” she shrugged.  
  
“Like?  Ammonium nitrate?  Hydroxyl-terminated polybutadiene?  LOX?  Dinitrogen tetroxide?  ALICE?” Jacobi watched to see if her expression glazed over.  She was very good at keeping her composure.    
  
“ALICE, mostly,” she responded, seconds late.    
  
“Yeah?  You don’t have problems with oxidization on the aluminum particles?” Jacobi inquired. “How do you get around it?”   
  
“Dr. Ri, why are you quizzing me?” she asked bluntly.   
  
“Quizzing you?!  I'm just talking shop!” he said as if he was deeply shocked or offended by her accusation.   
  
“Fine. Then yes, we do have some difficulty, but we’re working on ways around it. We’re writing a paper on the subject so I can’t tell you anything more.  Now I think you should talk to Bogdanov. He’s very eager.” She nodded toward the young man.    
  
“I just wanted to discuss your views on rocket casings vis-à-vis trajectory optimization,” Bogdanov said sheepishly. “Decreasing variables during liftoff would have so many benefits.”    
  
“Sure, fine,” Jacobi turned his attention toward the student with an audible sigh.    
  
“Can they really get as precise as you were in your paper?”  he asked.   
  
Jacobi snorted. He was always refining the shapes of his missiles, to the point his latest varied from perfect trajectory by numbers sometimes as many as eighteen zeroes right of the decimal. GF had finished a prototype.  It worked. But Goddard wouldn’t release that information for about a year. “I wouldn’t write about it if I didn’t think it was possible.”   
  
“Your experiments are really interesting,” said Bogdanov leadingly, swirling the straw in his glass.    
  
“Yep,” Jacobi agreed finishing his sandwich, but offering nothing more.

The whole time Bryant glowered at him.

Jacobi grinned back at her.  

  
  



	4. Spies and Hackers

 

Jacobi called late in the afternoon, around five o’clock.   

“Honey?” she asked.

“You can drop the act, Maxwell, I’m in the car,” said Jacobi.  

“What happened?” she asked nervously. He sounded fine, maybe a little annoyed, but he certainly wasn’t hurt.

“I need you to start looking into Layla Bryant, supposedly out of George Washington University,” he said.

“Both with y’s?” Maxwell clarified, opening a Word document and quickly typing in the name.  

“Yep,” Jacobi answered.  

“Is she something to worry about after all?” Maxwell asked.

“Worry about?  Not yet.  Look into?  Absolutely.  She’s not who she says she is.  She’s CIA.”

Maxwell felt her gut tighten.  That wasn’t something you ever wanted to hear.  She wasn’t worried, not really.  She truly believed that together Jacobi and she could handle any government spook, but U.S. involvement would infinitely complicate  _ everything  _ about the mission. “Shit,” Maxwell muttered.  “You’re sure?” 

“Almost positive. She’s got a bullet scar, and from the way she handles chemicals she’s sure as Hell not a chemist.   _ And  _ I found a bug under one of the tables, the kind the U.S. government uses,” Jacobi’s frustration was evident now, exhaustion hemming it.  Already tired of this.  That last point was a hard one to write off.  Someone had to plant the bug and Bryant was the most obvious choice.  

“Why do you think she’s here?  Same reason as us?”

“Same reason as us,” agreed Jacobi. “Get the schematics and probably off Ivanov.  How long do you think it will take to find her?”

“I’m not sure,” Maxwell conceded.  “It depends on how deep undercover she is.  A CIA agent won’t be easy to find.”

“Even for you?” he asked.

“I can do it,” she assured him.

“Well, no shit,” Jacobi scoffed as if that was a given.  He never doubted her.  That absolute confidence made her smile slightly. “But, roughly, how long?”

“Depends.  I’ve never hacked into the CIA before.  It’ll take at least a few hours.  Longer to actually find Bryant.”

“Okay,” Jacobi said.  “Let’s do this.”

“‘Let’s’?” Maxwell scoffed, “you’re not doing anything.  Let  _ me  _ get started.”

“That,” Jacobi said.

The phone conversation ended and Maxwell got to work.  First, she needed to know who Layla Bryant supposedly was, what she looked like, and who she was pretending to be.  That way, she could extract the truth from the lie like a surgeon performing a difficult operation.  

Bryant’s GW credentials looked real, but so did Joss Ri’s at Curie Labs.  She didn’t question Jacobi when he said Bryant was CIA, she didn’t doubt his theory, not only because he had been at this two years longer than she had, not only because he was her best friend, but because Daniel Jacobi was the best SI agent she had ever worked with.  Maxwell was always impressed by Jacobi’s skill. The Air Force made a massive mistake when they fired him and Major Kepler did GF an enormous favor when he took him on.  Smart, loyal, ingenious, fast-thinking, dedicated, stubborn, probably the best ballistics expert in the world – certainly the best at Goddard.  She admired him.  She trusted him.

Layla Bryant’s picture was of a professional woman in her thirties. The photo looked like one that might peek out at the back of books, there was no scar visible in the photo but it was only of her face and covered shoulders. She had a definite professionalism about her, even something scholarly.  Maxwell kept poking around, finding out everything she could about Layla Bryant.  She did some investigating, some light Googling, and constructed a working image of who this woman claimed to be.  She was supposedly a newly minted PhD in chemistry, an associate professor with a few papers she had coauthored, some of them seemingly quite impressive.  Apparently impressive enough to get Ivanov’s interest.  The CIA probably ensured she looked good enough on paper to be chosen, but not so exceptional that her sudden appearance seemed odd.  Exactly what Goddard Futuristics had done for Jacobi’s Joss Ri.

Maxwell now had someone to work with, an identity to debunk.

“Well, Layla Bryant, let’s see who you really are,” Maxwell muttered to herself.

 

***

 

She was peeling away the outer levels of security around the CIA data banks when Jacobi put dinner in front of her. She glanced up in surprise. “When did you get home?”

“Long enough to microwave that for you.”  He sat down next to her with his own plate. “Any luck?”

“Nothing yet,” Maxwell told him. She glanced at the plate but wasn’t really hungry.  She was too distracted by the job in front of her to feel much of anything besides growing excitement and steely determination.  This was what happened to her when she was hacking, nothing else in the world mattered, certainly not her own biological needs.  Jacobi opened his backpack and produced a container that, judging by the label, appeared to be grout.  But when Jacobi opened the lid to check on the contents he revealed more sirene cheese in a thin pool of brine.  Whoever gave Jacobi the cheese must not have had Tupperware and instead used whatever old containers they could find.  Maxwell just hoped it had been thoroughly cleaned out before it was filled with cheese and handed off to Jacobi.  She also hoped Jacobi would get sick of cheese soon.  They were already running out of room in the fridge after just two days.  They had enough of the stuff now to get them through the trip, Maxwell thought. But, she also believed, knowing Jacobi’s penchant for clutter and tendency towards obsession, there would probably be more. She had already seen him eat it with a disturbing amount of zeal.  

“More cheese?” she asked.

“Is that a problem?”

She took a breath then shook her head, “no.”  It wasn’t, not yet, but she had a feeling it would get there.  “Can you put it in the fridge?” she asked.

“Yeah, of course,” he answered, rising to do so.  

“Can you put the banitsa in the fridge?” she asked when she saw the plastic-wrapped phyllo dough peeking out of his bag, formerly hidden by the tub of cheese.  

“Don’t have to.  Spaska leaves the phyllo dough out when she makes it and the cheese is already cooked.”  

“You still need to refrigerate food, Jacobi,” Maxwell told him flatly.

“Eh,” Jacobi took the banista from his pack.  Below it Maxwell saw another container, this one with a plastic wrap lid secured with a rubber band. Inside was another cheese, yellow in color.  

“Really?” Maxwell asked.

“You want some?”

“No.”

“Good.”  He went to the kitchen with his prizes stacked in his arms.  “So what are you doing, exactly?” he called from across the hall.

“I’m still getting through the CIA’s security measures.  It might take a bit,” Maxwell answered.

“Have you done it before?” he asked.

“Not the CIA,” she said.  “I did get into the FBI for Major Kepler a few months ago.”  

When Jacobi returned from the kitchen, he opened the second laptop and plugged in a pair of earbuds.  She glanced over at the audio readouts, the label above told her he was listening to Mic 2, the bug they’d placed on Ivanov.  It also told her that the last time it had been sent to Kepler was three hours ago.  They hadn’t gotten any complaints yet so Maxwell assumed all was well or else Kepler’s mission had him too distracted to yell at them.  

Jacobi ate his dinner and listened to the feed in silence.  Several times he took a breath as if to say something, then seemed to think better of it, probably so he didn’t distract her.  When he put his plate in the sink he brought her a Zagorka beer, sitting it beside her computer.  He read a book while continuing to monitor Ivanov.  Eventually, when Maxwell’s eyes were starting to cross and she needed a quick break to soothe them, she glanced over at Jacobi.  

“How was the lab?” She realized it had been hours since either of them said a word.  

He popped out an earbud, “What?”

“How was work?” Maxwell repeated.

“Oh, you know,” he sighed, “boring.  Ivanov’s gone all Nixon and is too paranoid to let anyone see the complete plans.  He’s got the formula for the oxide himself, so I’m just building part of a rocket engine.  There’re a few differences between it and a more conventional biprop engine but so far there’s nothing to write home about.”

“You still need to write home about it.  Kepler will want an update,” Maxwell reminded him, perhaps unnecessarily.  Probably unnecessarily.  Jacobi was very good at the boring parts of his job too, far better than Maxwell ever was.

“I already sent it,” he said taking a sip of his beer.  

She lifted her beer for the first time and held it out to Jacobi.  Their ritual whenever they were on mission in another country: get a local beer, clink the bottles together, say “cheers” in the local language, if they both knew it.  It had been part of every international mission since her very first in Germany a year and a half ago.  

“Nastrave,” she said.

“Nastrave,” Jacobi brought his bottle to hers.  Zagorka beer was everywhere, Maxwell saw it in every convenience store, grocery, and restaurant they passed.  There were billboards for it along the highway.  Store freezers were emblazoned with the logo as were the umbrellas above the outdoor tables of the town’s restaurant.  She decided it wasn’t living up to its popularity.  Too light, not enough flavor.  

“Have you dealt with the CIA before?” Maxwell asked.

“Yeah, once. They were pains in the ass,” he sighed irritably.  “We should have guessed Cutter wasn’t going to be alone going after Ivanov.”  

“It’s going to mean a lot more work on our end, isn’t it?” Maxwell said, turning back to her computer.  Her program was still attempting to crack through the countermeasures.  

“Yep,” Jacobi told her, “and I’m going to have to deal with her every damn day.”  He leaned back, against the couch and closed his eyes as if in anticipation of the headache that was swiftly coming on.  

“What happened last time?” Maxwell asked.  

“Major Kepler capped ‘em,” Jacobi answered.  “And I made the bodies disappear.”

“That would blow our cover wide open,” Maxwell said.  “So we’ll have to deal with her like most people do.”

“Ugh,” Jacobi made a disgusted noise from deep in his throat.

“I know,” Maxwell said sympathetically.  

 

***

 

Maxwell worked long into the night.  Jacobi worked by her side for a while, listening to the bug as he read.  He sat with his feet up on the coffee table, computer across his lap.   

Eventually, he went to bed.  Once or twice in the night, Maxwell swore she could hear him snoring from upstairs, but she wasn’t sure even Jacobi’s snores were  _ that _ loud.  She pulled the earbuds from the laptop so she could listen in without moving from her present project.  

She didn’t realize how long she had been working until she heard movement upstairs.  It was 7:00 in the morning, Jacobi was getting up to get ready for work.  She heard him thumping around above her like an exhausted bear.  Maxwell knew she should have been tired, but she wasn’t. She never felt tired when she had a project like this, and now her heart was pounding with excitement. She got in.   _ Finally!   _

“Morning,” yawned Jacobi from the hallway, peeking in at her.  He was still in his pajamas, a pair of boxers and a t-shirt.  He wasn’t wearing his glasses and his eyes were still heavy, swollen with sleep.  

“Uh-huh,” she said, distracted.  She was beginning her search in honest. The entirety of the CIA was open to her, their agents, their missions, and, with only a little more effort, all of their intel.

“Made progress?” he asked.  

“Uh-huh.”

“Do you want some instant coffee?” he asked from the kitchen.

“Uh-huh.”

“Is that ‘uh-huh, I want coffee’ or ‘uh-huh, I want you to shut up,’” Jacobi asked.  

“Both,” Maxwell answered, not looking away from the screen.  Her job was far from finished.  She had to find the real Layla Bryant before the U.S.’s finest hackers found  _ her.   _ Doing this jeopardized everything, but she understood Jacobi’s wanting to know who they were up against.  Besides, Maxwell was not afraid of getting caught.  She would never be caught.  She was too good.  There wasn’t a hacker or machine in the world that could beat her.  

Jacobi laughed tiredly from the kitchen.  A brief pause and then he asked, “any word from Cutter or the Major?”

“No,” she said quickly, then realized that wasn’t entirely honest.  “I don’t think so.  I haven’t checked the other computer.  Now, would you shut up?”

“You know the answer to that,” he said.  She glanced up as he came in carrying twin mugs, a spoon poking over the rim of each.  He put hers next to the computer and sat beside her.  He absent-mindedly swirled his, probably to further dissolve the powder inside.  “It’s as close to coffee as I can make it.”

“Uh-huh,” she said.

“So how’s the Swordfishing?” he asked, nodding toward her computer.  

“As they say in the movies, ‘I’m in,’” Maxwell answered with a grin.  

“Awesome.”

“Did you expect anything less?” she asked with a smirk.  

“Nah,” Jacobi answered, taking a sip of his instant coffee.  Maxwell winced sympathetically, although he didn’t seem to mind.  She survived off a steady drip feed of coffee.  It was vital to her existence.  Jacobi might have been able to tolerate the Nescafé, but Maxwell would not stop being bitter about the subpar substance.  She would put up with whatever was available, she needed the caffeine to survive, but she much preferred something with actual beans rather than a simulation thereof.  

“How long until we find her?” asked Jacobi.

“Depends on how deep undercover she is,” Maxwell responded, taking a sip of coffee.  

“Anything interesting come over the bug?” asked Jacobi.  “I know Ivanov went to bed before I did, but maybe someone went to the lab?”

“Nope,” Maxwell said. “No one was there all night.  The only thing I heard was a dog barking at one point.”

“That’s the guard dog,” Jacobi said over the lip of his cup.  He was quiet for a few minutes, slowly slurping down his instant coffee.  “I had a dream about boardgames last night.”

“Really?”

“It was weird.  We were playing Clue with Kepler in some kind of underground lab.”

“I would rather die than play Clue with Kepler,” Maxwell said flatly, without looking up.  

“It was a nightmare,” Jacobi assured her.  He shivered.  Never play games with Kepler.  Never.  That was something Jacobi had warned Maxwell about early in her tenure at Goddard.  Jacobi and Kepler were more often paired up than Maxwell and Kepler were, but they had worked together enough that she had played his games with him, car trip games mostly.  They lasted hours because neither Maxwell nor Kepler  _ ever _ gave up.  They both refused to lose.  Maxwell never really wanted to get dragged into them, but she also never backed down.  “So then I got thinking about Clue.”  

“You’re really into this,” Maxwell said.

“ _ You  _ were the one who started talking about boardgames,” Jacobi pointed out.

“ _ I _ didn’t obsess.”  

“Whatever.  You know what bugs me about Clue?” he asked.

“Not enough explosions?” she asked.

“Actually, yeah,” Jacobi conceded.  

Maxwell chuckled.  Of course that was it.  She knew her friend well enough for that.  It was such a Jacobi answer.

“Hear me out.”

“I’m listening,” Maxwell agreed, half-listening, half-working as he spoke.

“Everything but the revolver is a blunt-force weapon.”

“You forgot the rope,” Maxwell said.

“Forgot the rope,” he conceded.  

“And the knife,” Maxwell added.

“Okay,  _ fine,  _ I forgot the knife, too.  But even if there  _ is _ a knife and a rope, half of them are blunt-force weapons.”

“It’s easy to beat somebody over the head,” Maxwell shrugged.

“It’s a game!  A little diversity is all I ask.”

“So what would you get rid of and replace with a bomb?” Maxwell asked.

“You know me so well,” Jacobi sighed.  “Lead pipe, swap it for dynamite.”

“Dynamite?!  You know they were supposed to be at some fancy dress party beforehand, right?  You don’t think someone would notice  _ dynamite? _ ”

“They didn’t notice the knife or the revolver,” Jacobi pointed out.

“They fit in a pocket.”

“Not _ all  _ of them.  Besides, fancy lady clothes don’t have pockets,” Jacobi pointed out.  “You whine about that all the time.”

“Or you could find those things in an old-timey mansion.  Maybe he has the revolver on display.”

“Loaded?”

“Maybe,” Maxwell said. “And maybe it was a kitchen knife.”

“Pretty sure it was a dagger.”

“You didn’t even remember it  _ existed  _ until a few seconds ago, now you remember what it looked like?”

“Google it!” Jacobi said.

“Um, I think what I’m doing is a  _ little _ more important, Jacobi,” Maxwell pointed out.  

“Oh, right,” Jacobi said sheepishly. He picked up the second laptop, Major Kepler would almost certainly question why they were Googling “weapons Clue board game” but he would probably only shake his head at their answer, maybe pinch the bridge of his nose.  He wouldn’t get mad at them unless they screwed up the mission.  They weren’t wasting too much time on it, since Maxwell was actively pursuing their opponent as Jacobi researched Parker Brothers games.  

Maxwell went back to work, her digital fingers probing deep into the sea of code.  How long would it take to find Bryant?  She was deep enough in that nearly the entirety of one of world’s largest and most important intelligence agencies was at her fingertips. She felt power in every keystroke.  She was like a god.  

But there were gods on the other side too.  White hats against her pitch black one.  She had to get what they needed before those white hats found her.  She was against the clock and she couldn’t see the timer. She was both predator and prey.

“It’s a dagger,” said Jacobi.  Maxwell had forgotten what they were talking about.  

“Okay,” she said.

“In Clue,” Jacobi added.  

“Riiight,” Maxwell said extending the “i.”

“You’re not listening anymore, are you?”

“Nope,” Maxwell said.  She barely was.

Jacobi said something else, but she had tuned him out entirely.  She wouldn’t be able to get everything in one session.  It was too dangerous.  Right now she was just trying to match Bryant’s image to one in their agent database.  Dozens of agents flitted past her eyes.  There were innumerable employees working for the CIA both as agents and in less secret positions.  But she would have a name soon.  Layla Bryant could not hide from her.  No one could.  After more of his one-sided conversation, Jacobi got up and got dressed, Maxwell stayed at the computer.  As he rounded the corner back into the room fully dressed Maxwell was grinning like a proud cat.  

“What’s up?” Jacobi asked.  

“Her name is Sakina Salvage,” Maxwell answered triumphantly.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know that we now officially know that Jacobi is gay, so all my fics are now an AU where he's aro/ace. I just...the ace stuff means a lot to me and I sewed it so deeply into the fics that I don't think I could change it if I tried. I'm sorry if that upsets anyone and I hope it's okay to break off from canon like this. I usually try to stick as closely as possible to canon, but I don't want to edit what I've already done. I like what I have too much. So I hope it's cool with everyone?


	5. Salvage and Sam

 

Sakina Salvage never thought she would be a CIA agent.  She’d never considered it until she applied for the job, almost as a joke.  But she was proud of her job.  She used to think she was good at it.  She wasn’t so sure now.  

She hated chemistry and, beyond the Hellish refresher course she’d been given before coming out here, her last interaction with it was high school.  She always hated questions with one answer, the kind from hard sciences and mathematics.  A right answer and endless wrong answers.  No wiggle room.  No way around it.  Nothing you could argue or reason through.  It wasn’t like real life at all.  She’d been an English major in college and worked as an editor before joining the Agency.  As far from the hard sciences as she could go.  In the humanities, anything could be proven if you were smart enough.  

She wasn’t  _ bad  _ at the hard sciences.  She had never in her life been  _ bad  _ at anything.  She just didn’t like them.  They were boring.  They were unfair.  Criminal amounts of both.  

Snow had been the opposite of Salvage in that regard.  She loved the hard sciences and math, hated the “esoteric” answers of the humanities.  Snow would have been so much better for this mission than Salvage.  But Snow was gone. 

Salvage sighed, glancing bitterly at her empty travel mug.  She needed more coffee.  She was exhausted.  Just living was so tiring these days.  She wanted to sleep forever.  She wanted to get away.  Get away from what?  From _ everything _ .  Work.  People.  Her own brain.  

She was in Bansko where she and her partner, Sam Rosenberg – undercover as Morgan Mercer – were staying in a small apartment above a Telenor store about four minutes walking distance from the town center with its souvenir shops and restaurants and small square where she’d been informed that in the summer there would be a jazz festival.

She hoped to God they wouldn’t still be there come summer.  But then again, she didn’t want to spend that time anywhere.  Even home felt empty these days.  Empty, cold, lonely.  There was no escape from those feelings.  And sometimes lack thereof.  Just numbness.  

Nothing felt right.  Not since it happened.  She knew she just had to go day by day, moment by moment, inch by agonizing inch, no matter how she felt.  She woke up every morning, went to bed every night even if she often lay awake for hours.  She kept on living even if she didn’t know why.  

She had to keep going.  

She owed that to Snow.  That was what she told herself and what her therapist told her, too.  Sometimes it felt like such a hollow statement.  There was no way to know how Snow felt, because Snow didn’t feel anything anymore.  She was gone.  

Salvage pulled into an unoccupied spot.  She parked and turned off the radio she was using to fill the ugly silence.  It was a top 20 station, playing mostly American hits that had clearly become as endemic in Bulgaria as they had in the US.  “Happy” by Pharrell Williams was playing and she was glad to cut it short.  She barely remembered what happiness felt like.  She sat for a few minutes in the silence.  She closed her eyes, let out a low sigh.  Then she climbed out, turned toward the building, and locked the car doors without turning around, holding the key fob over her shoulder.  She entered the building’s back entrance and climbed the narrow staircase to their flat.  The hall was dark and hot.  Light streamed out from under her apartment’s door.  Music – more obnoxious pop music, knowing Rosenberg – was muffled by their door.  She felt a swell of annoyance: they should have been monitoring the lab.

Rosenberg wasn’t good for anything, she thought.  Useless.  But then she remembered what her therapist said, that she was too hard on her fellow agents since it happened.  She compared everyone to Snow and no one would ever be as good as Snow was.  Salvage was too hard on everyone these days, herself included.  Maybe the lab had emptied for the night; after all, even Ivanov didn’t live there.  She knew the grad students had left.  Ri had gone home, too.  Salvage wouldn’t leave until he did.  She thought he might have dwelt longer than necessary, maybe waiting for her, too.   

They were staying in a small apartment, four little rooms, but the pair didn’t need more.  The Agency could only give them so much.  There was a main room, the largest, both living and dining room.  There was a kitchen that barely fit two people, a bedroom with two single beds, and the bathroom that contained only sink, toilet, and shower without a curtain, as seemed standard in Bulgaria.  

She unlocked the door and pulled it open.  

“ _ Gaga ooh-la-la!  Want your bad romance!”  _

Obnoxious pop.  She was right.

“Rosenberg, turn that crap down,” Salvage said, rubbing her temples.  She took off her ear cuff mic/speaker and laid it on the table beside the door.  

Sam Rosenberg sat on the couch bent far forward over their laptop where it rested on the coffee table.

“You’re no fun,” Rosenberg said, although they obeyed.  

“Did Ivanov go home?” asked Salvage.

“Five minutes ago,” replied Rosenberg.  

“We need to tail him.”

“Shouldn’t you do it?  You’re his employee,” Rosenberg said.

“Which is why he would notice,” pointed out Salvage.

“Okay, okay, I’ll do it.  Tomorrow if you want.”

“No,” Salvage said, “we need to figure out how to do it without being conspicuous.  You can’t be seen.”

“Well, no, duh,” answered Rosenberg.  “I’d wait outside of the nearest village in whatever direction he goes.”

“Let me think about it,” Salvage replied.  

Rosenberg was a person about five-foot-seven or so with brown hair and eyes and pale skin.  They had a round, friendly face, and a kind, open expression.  They smiled a lot, even if sometimes it was a wicked smirk that didn’t suit their features at all.  They were friendly, maybe a little too much so, and joking, which Salvage found unprofessional and obnoxious.  

Rosenberg looked more typically Bulgarian than Salvage did.  Salvage had yet to encounter another black person in the country, but so far that hadn’t been a problem.  Rosenberg’s specialty was  computers.  They were acting as backup rather than being active in the field.  They were extremely good at it, better than Salvage was.  They worked as a hacker when they weren’t on mission, so they were an excellent asset for getting into Ivanov’s records.  The downside was that Salvage stood out, but, then again, so did Ri, his eyes with Epicanthic folds and his skin just a little too dark to be ethnically Bulgarian.

Ri.  

He was a tall man, slightly skinny, with black hair and narrow eyes nearly as dark.  He wore horn-rimmed glasses and Chuck Taylor high tops.  He had a heart-shaped face and heavy, critical eyebrows.  In appearance, he was largely unremarkable.  But there was something about him she didn’t trust.  

Salvage already didn’t like Joss Ri.  She didn’t like how nosy he was, how insistent.  She had a very bad feeling about him.  Maybe her feelings were unjustified; co-workers accused her of being paranoid since it happened.   But, regardless, she was absolutely sure he was more than he seemed.  “You heard Joss Ri, didn’t you?”

“Of course,” Rosenberg scoffed.  “I did do my job, Salvage.”

“You never know,” muttered Salvage, crossing to the kitchen.  She opened the fridge and removed a strawberry yogurt drink, cracking it open.  

“Thanks for the confidence,” Rosenberg growled back.  

She shrugged with one shoulder, half-chugging her drink.  She dropped down into a chair at the dining table, assuming her usual pose, legs apart.  “Ri is an asshole,” she said.  

“So you two have a lot in common,” Rosenberg smirked.

“Eat a dick, Rosenberg,” she said, eyes closed.

“Ladies first.”  

“Start looking into Joss Ri. I want to know everything about him,” she said, ignoring them.  

“Why?” they asked.

“Because I don’t like having an unknown in the equation!” she snapped.

“Okay!” they said, putting their hands up.  “But he’s just some guy, right?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with a sigh.  “He could be some random scientist or he could be someone else looking for Ivanov’s engine.  When we were briefed, Director Haines told us there might be competition.  Why are you ignoring the possibility that he could be an agent from somewhere else?  The U.S. can’t be the only country with intel on Ivanov.”

“Okay, okay, you’re right,” Rosenberg conceded.  “Especially considering he’s going by Ri and not Lee.  Improperly Anglicized.”  

“That’s a good point,” said Salvage.  

“Don’t sound so surprised, I do have them sometimes,” scoffed Rosenberg before continuing on, “But then there’s the question of why he’s pretending to come from the U.S.  Why not actually be from Korea or China?  It’s not like Ivanov explicitly asked for Americans.”  

“I don’t know.  Maybe the U.S. seems more trustworthy than where he’s from.  Like North Korea or China.”

“China’s not that much more untrustworthy than us.  Really, the U.S. is pretty sketchy, you know?” they pointed out.  

“Whose side are you on?” she demanded.  

“I’m on the U.S.’s side!  Look who I work for!  I’m just  _ saying _ , you know?  I’m reasoning through this!  Jeez.”  

“Just look into it!” snapped Salvage.

“You’re not actually my boss, Salvage,” they grumbled.

She shot them a cold look.  

“Okay, okay,” they put their hands up in mock surrender, “I’ll look into China and South Korea.  If he’s out of North Korea, he’ll be harder to track down.  As you may know, they’re a little nuts over there.  Very secretive.” 

“Maybe we should take a leaf out of  _ their _ books.  Maybe we’re too open and obvious.”  She was afraid, perhaps stupidly, that Ri was looking for her, too.  She had already completely convinced herself he was an enemy agent.  She had made mistakes in the past.  She wouldn’t do it again.  Not after last time.  

“Whose side are  _ you  _ on?  Remember, you get to eat in the U.S. before you go defecting, Salvage,” said Rosenberg, breaking her from her thoughts.  

“Don’t even joke,” she snapped.  

“Maybe you should joke more.  Take that stick out of your ass for once,” muttered Rosenberg.

“Maybe you should shut up and find out if Joss Ri is a spy,” Salvage responded.

“Fine,” Rosenberg said icily. “If he exists anywhere in the world I’ll find him. And if he isn’t who he says he is…we’ve got the firepower to stop him.”

“Good. Get to work.”

“You’re not my real mom.”  

Salvage ignored them and put her drink on the table. This was important.  The sooner Rosenberg and she knew who they were dealing with, the better.  Rosenberg was good, regardless of how unprofessional they seemed. At least according to what people told her: they were one of the best white hats the Agency had.  If that was true, she liked the odds of them tracking Ri down and doing it quickly.  

“Did you ever smile when she was around?” muttered Rosenberg after catching a look at her sour expression out of the tail of their eye.

“What?!” Salvage demanded, her hands clenched into fists.  She was ready to knock out a few of Rosenberg’s teeth.  She was ready to bash their head into their computer.  They mentioned  _ her _ .  How dare they?!

“I—” they looked at her and their expression changed, became more empathetic, “nothing…”

“I didn’t think so,” she growled.  

There was a pause, pregnant and uncomfortable.  Long.

“You know…this is going to look really bad if this guy is legit.  We don’t have a lot of evidence, just a weird name and the fact that he was curious.  Maybe his family never changed it.  Maybe he just comes off like a dick?”  

“Just trust me for once!”  snapped Salvage.  Snow would have.  They had always trusted each other.  

“Fine, I’ll look.  But just as a heads-up, Curie Labs  _ is _ real and Joss Ri  _ does _ work there,” said Rosenberg, turning their laptop toward her.  She could see a picture of Ri, smiling, with a brief paragraph of text beside him, over laying Curie Labs’s logo.  

“Rosenberg!”

“You aren’t in charge, Salvage!  If  _ I  _ have to trust  _ you _ ,  _ you  _ have to trust  _ me!   _ We’re supposed to be partners!  Jesus Christ!”  

Salvage was taken aback.  For a moment she just stared at the angry expression on Rosenberg’s usually friendly face.  She realized she was demanding things of Rosenberg in a way she never would have Snow.  And she knew why.  She had trusted Snow.  Snow had trusted her.  She didn’t trust Rosenberg, and they didn’t trust her, either.  

Rosenberg sighed, the anger dissipating like a raincloud that never broke.  “Look, if Ri isn’t what he says he is, I’ll figure it out.  I’ll scour everything I have to.  But if he’s legit, you let this go.”  

“Fine.”

The silence that sank around them was unbearable.  


	6. Sexism and Skepticism

 

Jacobi loved his job and he was extremely good at it.  He was an ass, but he knew what he was doing.  And the latter meant he could get away with the former.  

He could tell it was driving Salvage quickly insane.  She was probably a good agent.  She kept up the act, she blended in as best she could, but she wasn’t a chemist and the crash course the CIA must have given her only went so far. 

Jacobi was bitter that he wasn’t allowed to see the full plans. He only had the one piece, the grad students were given another, Salvage had a third, and the final piece was for Ivanov’s eyes only.  So Jacobi’s job became charming Ivanov and his students.  

Salvage was a lost cause.  She made that clear almost immediately.  She kept her distance from him, kept her responses curt and cold, and guarded her folder as if her life depended on it.  As if there were spies everywhere.  It became obvious that Salvage and Jacobi were competing against each other; they both knew it, but neither said a word.  Jacobi was pretty sure she suspected he was something more than Joss Ri, rocket scientist, but he wasn’t worried.  Not yet.  She could suspect all she wanted, she wouldn’t find any shred of the truth anywhere.  She didn’t make a move against him or Ivanov in that first week.  Something was keeping her from acting, most likely the same something that kept  _ him _ from acting.  They both wanted the plans.  They both  _ needed _ the plans.  On top of that, they both needed to see if it would actually work.  Neither one was going to blow the whistle when it might compromise their respective missions this early, before they had more than a quarter of what they needed.

There was a Cold War brewing and Jacobi was enjoying it immensely.  It was only going to get worse…or better, depending on the combatant’s point of view.  Jacobi, for one, was looking forward to it.  

Ivanov was very much like Jacobi in a certain way.  He was also an ass. But that was mostly where the similarities ended.  They were both arrogant, but Ivanov was paranoid and prejudiced, judgmental in a way very different from Jacobi.  Ivanov was torn between helicopter-parenting his engine and locking himself in his office for hours where he worked on the oxide alone.  Jacobi and Ivanov probably got along because Jacobi was talented and his smug sarcasm didn’t bother his employer.  Ivanov was more critical of Salvage, Bogdanov, and Badžo.   _ Especially _ Badžo.  Jacobi couldn’t help but notice that.  He hovered over her table.  He clearly distrusted her more than the others. He watched her leave everyday, as if trying to see through her bag and Jacobi saw him look over the contents of the table as if looking for something missing. 

Jacobi worked on the rocket and he snooped around for the other’s portions of the plans as best he could.  Maxwell had tried to get them off Ivanov’s server, but after hacking in she found it was empty of any information they might need.  It was almost entirely empty, clearly his paranoia extended beyond his present project.  Apparently the plans only existed on paper.  Jacobi wasn’t terribly surprised.  So instead Maxwell worked on tracking down everything she could about Salvage and her mission. 

She had a breakthrough one afternoon when Jacobi was working on the combustion chamber.  She was lucky it hadn’t been a couple seconds earlier when the sudden buzz from his pocket may have startled him and caused him to incorrectly shear the metal he was cutting or slice through his own finger.  He had just put down the plasma cutter when his pocket buzzed. 

“Got a call, Ri?” asked Salvage from her cubicle. 

“Looks like it,” said Jacobi glancing at the number displayed on his iPhone.  “Excuse me a second, guys, it’s my wife.”  

He stepped out into the warm sun.  Ivanov stood leaning against the building, smoking a cigarette, hands buried in his pockets. It didn’t matter, he would get far enough away that Maxwell could tell him what she needed and Jacobi could respond innocuously.  

“What’s up?” Jacobi asked.  “We’re very busy.”  “We’re” indicating he wasn’t alone. “But I’ve got time.”  Meaning he was far enough away from the other person that she could speak freely.  This was all the code they’d worked out over the last few days.  

“I’ve got her!” Maxwell said excitedly but quietly.  

“That’s great!”

“She’s a special op for the CIA, deep undercover.   She’s single, 35, and lives at 1100 7th Street North East, Apartment 12, Washington, D.C..  Born and raised in Fort Lauderdale.   _ Everything  _ about her is classified.  She’s done field work and assassinations.  She has some good hits under her belt and work in the Americas, Africa, and the Middle East over a career of six years.” 

“Uh-huh,” Jacobi said vaguely. 

“She got that scar you noticed in...it looks like Iraq earlier this year.  I’ll dig up the medical report. I don’t know her orders yet, which is annoying, and I’m not sure if she’s alone yet. I’m going to keep looking,” Maxwell provided.  

“It’ll turn up,” Jacobi assured her.

“Of  _ course _ it will.  I need to sign off for now.  How are things going there?” 

“Oh you know, same as always,” Jacobi answered with a sigh.  “Love you,” he added for effect. “I’ll see you tonight.”  He hung up his phone and pocketed it.

“Trouble with the wife?” asked Ivanov around his cigarette as Jacobi turned to reenter the building.  

“No,” Jacobi answered.  “No trouble.  Why would you —?”

“I always assume trouble,” laughed Ivanov.  “Because there usually is.”

“Not with us,” Jacobi assured him.   

“What is her name?” Ivanov asked.  Jacobi wasn’t sure why he was trying to get so chummy, especially considering he didn’t try to reach out to anyone else on the team.  Why did he trust Jacobi?  Or did he trust Jacobi  _ less _ and was trying to catch him in some lie?  Jacobi wasn’t sure, but the best way to do this was to act as if it didn’t bother him.  And besides, getting close to Ivanov might make his job easier.    

“Tessa,” Jacobi provided easily.

“How long have you been married?” he asked.  

“Two years,” Jacobi answered, he fingered the wedding ring subtly.  

“Do you like it?” 

“Sure,” Jacobi shrugged.  

“Hm,” Ivanov said.  “Good luck.” 

“Uh…thanks?” Jacobi said.  He was about to tug open the door when Ivanov interrupted again.  

“What does she do?” 

“She’s a programmer.” 

“Computers?” asked Ivanov, surprised.

“Yep,” Jacobi answered. 

“She must be very smart.” 

“She is,” Jacobi said honestly.  

“Is she pretty too?” 

“Huh?” Jacobi was taken aback.  

“Tessa,” he clarified.  “Is she pretty?” 

Jacobi blinked.  Why did Ivanov care what this supposed wife looked like?  Why did he care about his employee’s wife at all?  Jacobi realized he was expected to answer.  “Yeah,” he said.  “Of course.”  

Because that was what one said about one’s wife.  Jacobi had never thought about Maxwell’s physical appearance.  He rarely thought of people as being attractive or not, especially not women.  He was just so distant from it.  He didn’t  _ care _ .  He’d never been attracted to anyone sexually or romantically.  He’d never had any kind of physical desire.  It had driven him crazy when he was a teenager.  He didn’t understand what the other boys were seeing, why it mattered.  As a teenager it had been terrifying, this absence of attraction of any kind.  He knew it made him different, strange, neutered.  It angered his father when Jacobi failed to bring home any girls.   He accused his son of being gay, but even that would have been easier for Jacobi himself to accept, being gay would have meant he felt  _ something _ .  When he was younger he had never heard of anyone like him.  He had made up crushes, tried to force himself to see what other boys did, but it was all fabricated.  He couldn’t understand how other people didn’t have to force and fake these emotions.  It had scared him to think that they didn’t need to, that there was this necessary thing he was just  _ missing _ .

It tortured him until he met Maxwell, who was the same as he was.  No interest in sex or romance.  But unlike him, she didn’t care about what she lacked, and it helped him feel the same way.  It made him feel normal for the first time since he was 13.  It helped him let that anxiety, that fear, that feeling of impotence, go.  It was part of the reason why it was sometimes hard to pretend to play Maxwell’s husband, one of the things that brought them together was the impossibility of that.

Jacobi wasn’t sure if anyone would call Maxwell “pretty.”  Maxwell was small, skinny, white, with messy curly brown hair, big brown eyes, a small nose, and an oval face.  She certainly never paid attention to her appearance.  There were days she forgot to or just didn’t shower.  She never wore anything “flattering.”  She favored comfort to appearances.  She scoffed at the women on magazine covers.  She would call herself…well, she wouldn’t call herself anything.  She didn’t care enough.  And Jacobi didn’t either.  Honestly, there was nothing Jacobi cared about, nothing he  _ thought  _ about, less in the world.  

“I’d like to meet her, then.” 

“Oh, yeah?” Jacobi asked cautiously.

“What man doesn’t like meeting pretty girls?” Ivanov grinned wolfishly.

Jacobi made a noise, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with that statement.  He felt a vague pang of anger on Maxwell’s behalf.  She didn’t put up with being flirted with.  She would have had a few choice words at Ivanov’s behavior. 

“Don’t worry, I won’t steal her away,” Ivanov said, misinterpreting his reaction.  “I’m not good-looking enough for pretty girls.  They don’t like a man without money  _ or  _ looks, do they?  Besides, it seems she’s loyal to you.”  

“Uh…” Jacobi didn’t know what to say to that.  

“She followed you to Bulgaria,” he said. “Not even a city, just some village.  It’s not like the United States here.” 

“We didn’t want to be apart,” Jacobi said.

“You should count your blessings,” he stubbed his cigarette out under foot, “loyal women aren’t easy to find.” 

“I don’t know about that,” Jacobi muttered.  

“I  _ do.   _ Believe me. I was going to be married once.  She left me, and as soon as she did she was with another man.  Women have no interest in smart men.” 

“Tessa’s smarter than me.” 

A scoff.  “It would be hard for any woman to be smarter than you.” 

“It’s hard for  _ anyone _ to be smarter than me,” Jacobi said.    

Ivanov laughed.  “I like that, Ri,” he said.  “You know what you are and you aren’t afraid to embrace it.  You don’t need to be polite.  I like you better than Salvage for that.”  

After this conversation Jacobi thought there may have been other reasons as well, darker ones.  Less reasonable ones.  He could practically hear Maxwell gagging on Ivanov’s words.  

“Shall we get back to work?” asked Ivanov.  

“Yeah, sounds good,” Jacobi said.  They walked into the building together.  At the very least Ivanov liked him.  That was a good start.  

He kept that conversation from Maxwell, or at least he didn’t discuss it with her.  He didn’t need to.  It turned out the closest bug was sensitive enough to pick up the conversation; it was quiet, far quieter than the Bulgarian exchanges between Bogdanov and Badžo, but she heard it all the same.  She predictably hadn’t appreciated the exchange.

“What.  An.  Asshole.”  

 

***

 

Every day Jacobi told Maxwell about his accomplishments both in gathering intel and teasing Salvage.  He had a plan to get more of the schematics; he just had to charm the graduate students into letting him get a glimpse at their folders.  He could take a picture with the camera hidden in the frame of his glasses. Then GF agents back at Canaveral would be able to translate the Bulgarian.  He only needed a second alone with their folder.  How hard could it be?  

The problem — and Maxwell pointed out it  _ was _ a problem — was that Jacobi’s getting the plans depended on something.  Well, a few things.  Two he could easily handle, being sneaky and knowing physics.  Years as an SI-5 agent made him the former and his expertise in ballistics meant the latter was not close to a concern. The  _ problem _ was that his new plan depended on Daniel Jacobi – sarcastic, smug, and cavalier – being charming and becoming friendly with a couple of grad students who barely knew what they were doing. 

“This is going to be hilarious,” Maxwell said when he presented the plan of befriending the students to get what info he couldn’t glean from spying on them.  He had been taking extensive notes on everything he could, discreetly watching the other three employees whenever he could, jotting everything down in his notebook.

“Hey!”  Jacobi asked indignantly.  “Why?!” 

“No offense Jacobi, but you’re hardly the cuddliest man in the world.” 

“None taken,” Jacobi answered.  

“I would say you can be downright prickly.” 

“Sometimes,” he shrugged.  

“And you don’t like stupid people.”

“Who does?” 

“These grad students, how good are they at their jobs?”

“Could be worse. Could be  _ way  _ better though,” he said, adding extra huff to the word “way.”    

“Yeah, this is going to be hilarious. I’m sorry I won’t be able to see it. You’re going to give yourself an aneurism,” Maxwell gave him a wide grin, looking away from the computer for a second.

“No way!” Jacobi scoffed.  “I can handle a couple of grad students!  You just worry about finding out everything you can about Salvage.”

“I’m  _ trying _ ,” Maxwell informed him.

“Any luck?”

“Some.  It’s a hard database to navigate, okay?!” she said defensively.  

“Sorry I asked,” he replied, just as defensively.  

“What did  _ you _ get done today?” asked Maxwell.

“I played music from the soundtrack to Goldfinger until Salvage turned it off.  She was  _ piiiiissed _ ," Jacobi smirked.  

“I heard!  Productive!” She gave him a sarcastic thumbs up.  

“I was also working on the combustion chamber!” Jacobi added.  “I need the notes sent to the Major, by the way.”

“Good, because I need a break from CIA reports.” Maxwell held out her hand for the papers, and Jacobi passed them to her.  

“That rough?”

“How the CIA gets anything done is beyond me,” Maxwell said.  She flipped through Jacobi’s neat notes, graphs, and sketches.  “But I’m getting close.”  

“How much longer?”

“Don’t rush genius.”

“Want to bet which one of us finishes first?”

“It’ll be me,” Maxwell assured him.

“Do you want to bet?” Jacobi repeated more slowly.  “Say 20 Leva?” 

“You’re on.” 

  
  



	7. Looking Back and Moving Forward

 

Time passed quickly.  

Jacobi worked on the rocket, he snooped around for the plans.  Maxwell found information about Salvage, but nothing yet about her mission.  Maxwell was not used to things taking this long and it was infuriating.  She also hated working in such short sessions, but she couldn’t be caught.  That would cost the entire mission and throw them at the mercy of the CIA.  She’d been given direct orders from Kepler himself not to spend more than an hour or so in their servers at any given time.  Her responsibilities were torn between searching for Salvage and keeping an ear on Jacobi, tracking everything going on in the lab in case she could figure out something Jacobi missed.  

Then came the Day.  

Jacobi woke up first on the Anniversary.  When Maxwell’s alarm went off she was in an empty, silent bed.  His side wasn’t even warm.  

Maxwell padded her way downstairs.

He was in the kitchen staring sorrowfully into his cup of coffee.  

“Jacobi?” she asked when he didn’t look up.  

He sighed.  “This time five years ago I’m living in Ohio, getting ready for work, pissed about that  _ fucking detonator _ .  My boss, Harris, calls me to ask if we’re running the test again.  I tell him I’m not giving up.  I drink my coffee, I eat some Honey Nut Cheerios, I put on my shoes, I drive to work.  Everything’s so normal.  So  _ goddamn _ normal,” Jacobi told his cup.  Maxwell had never heard him sound more lost and bitter, more sad.  No, there was one other time, when he told her exactly what happened during the Incident one year ago today.  “Then one year later I’m…oh…” he sighed, “in my boxers getting ready for a day of hard drinking.  Very hard drinking.  I’m talking forget-my-own-name drinking.  It started right about now.”  

Maxwell’s eyes went to the clock.  8 a.m..  She looked back at him and her concern must have been obvious.  

“It’s just coffee,” Jacobi told her, brandishing his cup, “Don’t worry, I know I have a job to do.”

“I’m not worried about the mission,” Maxwell answered, “I’m worried about  _ you,  _ you idiot.” __ Of course she was worried about him.  He was her best friend and he was suffering.  

Jacobi glanced up from his coffee.  He gave her a small unconvincing smile.  “I’m okay.” 

“No, you aren’t,” Maxwell said.  She pushed the other chair next to him and sat down.  

“No,” he agreed with a sigh, “I’m really not.” 

“But that’s okay.” 

Jacobi let out a huff of air.  

“You  _ will  _ be okay,” Maxwell assured him.  “Look how far you’ve come!  You’re dressed, you’re going to work, you’re not just lying around and getting wasted.”  

“Yep,” Jacobi said noncommittally.  

“Jacobi…” she paused.  “Daniel…” Maxwell put her hand on his shoulder.  He shrugged it off.  

“Stop it.  There’s nothing to say,” he told her, “there’s nothing to say.”

Jacobi went to work.  He was quiet all day.  He didn’t even taunt Salvage.  His mind was clearly elsewhere.  Even the people in Ivanov’s lab noticed it.  

“Are you okay, Dr. Ri?” asked Bogdanov as Maxwell listened over the bugs.  

“Fine,” Jacobi answered shortly.  

“Are you sure?  You seem…”

“I said I’m fine!” Jacobi snapped.  

“Sorry,” said Bogdanov.  No one else tried to comfort him. 

It was disturbing and heartbreaking for Maxwell who listened silently to her friend.  She couldn’t even comfort him – although she knew that would not be an easy thing to do.  He’d been like this last year too, but back then Maxwell hadn’t known  _ why  _ Jacobi had been so sorrowful and closed off.  It was that day she found out about the Incident.  The explosion that ruined Jacobi’s life.  And wasn’t that so bitterly ironic?  The thing he loved most, the thing that defined his life, had nearly ended it.  Two men dead, two years out of work, everything he ever had, everything he had worked for, snatched away from him in a single moment.  He unloaded it on her as he drank heavily.  After a while Maxwell couldn’t take it and slapped the glass out of his hand.  She drank with him before then and afterward, but not like that.  Not with the intent to forget, to escape, to get so plastered that he lost himself.  It was a different on the Anniversary.  After she knocked the glass away and yelled at him he’d stormed off, presumably to drink in less judgmental company.  Or maybe utterly alone.  

Maxwell’s plan for today was different.  She wouldn’t chase him away this time.   

He left the lab without saying goodnight to anyone.  When he came home he gave Maxwell a brief “hey.”  Then he dropped into a kitchen chair as if he weighed as much as a planet.  As if he just couldn’t carry the weight anymore.  Without saying a word Maxwell joined him.  She took the unmarked plastic bottle of homemade rakia from the counter and put it in the center of the table.  She retrieved two small glasses and put them on opposite sides of the table, one in front of Jacobi, one where she would sit.  She then got ice from the freezer and placed them beside the rakia.  

Jacobi poured himself a full glass of rakia.  He eyed the clear liquid for a few seconds and heaved a sigh as Maxwell poured her own glass, adding a few ice cubes to reduce the strength.

“To fucking up,” Jacobi said, raising his glass.  

“To not fucking up in the future,” Maxwell clinked her glass with his.  

He took a deep gulp and coughed.  “Forgot you have to sip it,” he wheezed.  Maxwell winced sympathetically.  “You can laugh,” he said, his voice returning to normal.

Maxwell shook her head. On any other day she would have laughed at him.  Any other day.  But Jacobi was already a wreck today.  He didn’t need another blow to his sensitive pride.  He wouldn’t tease her back today. She took a sip and was shocked by how long the fire remained in her chest and throat.  “That is strong,” she coughed.  “So, what do you do now?”

“Drink myself stupid.  Drink myself to sleep,” Jacobi said flatly.  “Then wake up tomorrow with a Hell of a hangover.”

“That sounds unbelievably shitty,” Maxwell said flatly.   

“It is,” he agreed.

“We aren’t doing that.  It’s stupid,” said Maxwell with finality. 

“I didn’t ask your opinion, Maxwell.” 

“You’re getting it anyway!” she snapped back.

Jacobi scowled into his cup.  “It’s the Anniversary of the worst day of my life.”

“So?!” Maxwell asked, “That doesn’t mean you get to be an asshole!  There are people who care about you, Daniel!  You don’t get to give yourself alcohol poisoning just because you’re sad!  I’ll drink with you, but you’re not allowed to pass out.  I’m not hauling your ass to bed.” 

Jacobi chuckled darkly, taking a sip, “Okay, fine.  Tell me  _ your  _ idea.”

“We talk about it.”

“What?!” Jacobi stared at her, incredulous, “No!”

“Why not?!” 

“Because it was the worst day of my life!  I lost  _ everything!   _ Two guys  _ died! _ ”  Jacobi snapped.  

“Were they your friends?” asked Maxwell quietly.  

Jacobi sighed, he swirled the glass and watched the rakia for long enough that Maxwell worried she’d crossed the line, driven him away already.  But then he continued.  “Not really.  They were my co-workers, subordinates.  Nice guys, both of them, but we didn’t hang out or anything.”  

“What were their names?” Maxwell asked.  He’d never told her before.  

“Maxwell…” but he didn’t say anything more for a long time.  He threw back more rakia, coughed.  “This is not good Anniversary booze,” he said.  

Maxwell smiled mirthlessly.  “We can switch to beer,” she said, it was the only other alcohol they had in the house.  

“Beer is even worse Anniversary booze,” Jacobi answered.  “It’s not strong enough.”  He shook his head and glared at his cup.  “Martinez and Fitzpatrick,” he said, putting the glass down on the table again.  “Martinez was...nice.  Too nice.  Nice to the point that he was obnoxious.  Real positive attitude.  Always darkest before the dawn.  The world is beautiful.  Weird outlook for a guy working in orbital ballistics.  You might’ve liked him if he wasn’t so damn outgoing and friendly.”  

Maxwell let out a quiet chuckle.

“Fitzpatrick was drier.  Played the pessimist.  I don’t know if he actually was one or if it was just his schtick.  He liked schticks.  But it doesn’t matter in the long run, huh?  They both went out the same way.  Boom. __ The end.  Super dead.  One second everything is fine, they’re there, they’re fine, we’re fine, my life makes sense, and then…just gone.  I lost everything and…they died.”  

“They did.  They both died.  Nothing will ever change that,” said Maxwell.  “Martinez and Fitzpatrick died and it may have been your fault.”  

Jacobi swallowed dryly, audibly.  He always said it was no one’s fault, but, as he admitted ten days ago, he didn’t actually know.  He never got more than a first glance at the missile’s remains.  He couldn’t examine the detonator.  He opened his mouth but said nothing.  It was as if for once in his life words just wouldn’t come to him.  

“Listen to me,” Maxwell said, with more force.  “ _ They _ are gone,  _ you _ are not! You have a future!” 

“So what?!” Jacobi demanded.  

“So use it!” Maxwell snapped.  “You owe it to them.  You owe it to Major Kepler!You owe it to me!You owe it to _yourself!_ ”  

Jacobi’s surprised expression softened.  Maxwell’s remained hard; she’d never been more serious about anything in her life.  

“Instead of wallowing in guilt and booze, be the best ballistics specialist you can be!  Be  _ better  _ than that!  Be the best there ever was!  Be the best damn SI agent Goddard Futuristics has ever had!  You’re on your way already!  Steal this engine!  Make sure that people are  _ as safe as possible!”   _

Jacobi didn’t answer, but the corners of his mouth twitched into a brief sad smile.  

“Tell me what you would do differently now,” Maxwell said after a pause. 

“What?” 

“You aren’t drunk yet, you know what I said.  Major Kepler gives you the same assignment, the same detonator, the same plan, the same everything.  You’re still in charge of people.  They depend on you.  If it’s  _ always _ in the back of your mind like you said it was, you must know what you’d do differently.”  

“I take safety precautions more seriously now.  I follow protocol,” Jacobi sighed.  Maxwell knew that.  Jacobi might have played with fire but he was always careful not to get burned. “These days I wouldn’t let anyone that close, safety gear or no.  They’d do it remotely, Eunomia could help.”   Eunomia was the lab’s AI assistant.  Unlike many AIs she had a tactile element, claws that could be deployed at will.  “She’d need to be taught first.  Wouldn’t be as easy as with a human being, but…safer.”  

“I could teach her everything you know about ballistics in a few minutes,” Maxwell assured him. 

“Thanks,” said Jacobi sarcastically. 

“It’s a compliment,” Maxwell assured him, “For anyone else it would be a few seconds.”

“…Thanks,” said Jacobi a little more earnestly.  

“It’s true,” Maxwell said.  “You’re better than you think you are.” 

“I think I’m damn good,” Jacobi assured her.

“Well, you’re better than that,” Maxwell said honestly.  Jacobi was the best.  Even if he knew he was, he never seemed quite convinced.  He needed validation outside himself. She saw him seek it, most often from Kepler, like a dog desperate for a pat on the head.  

“You’re good, too,” Jacobi said.  “The world’s best hacker.”

“That’s accurate,” Maxwell smirked.  She didn’t need reassurance. She didn’t need praise. Like Jacobi, she never received it as a child. But while that made Jacobi more desperate for it, it made Maxwell harden.  Jacobi still wanted his father’s praise, Maxwell would have spit in Pastor Maxwell’s face regardless of what he came to say to her.  Not that he ever could, even if Goddard hadn’t faked Maxwell’s death, she had a restraining order against every member of her immediate family for what they put her through.  Jacobi and she were both psychologically scarred by their families but Maxwell’s hardened into a carapace.  However, she did find herself touched by Jacobi’s honest praise.  She admired him, trusted him, cared about him, so it meant something to hear him say those words.  It felt like more than empty generic compliments.   

They’d found each other, these two wounded souls.  Maxwell didn’t believe in fate, she didn’t believe in the God her father was constantly shouting about, she didn’t believe anyone had a destiny.  It would have been easy for the two of them never to have met.  By all accounts, they shouldn’t have.  But they did.  She was glad chance had brought Jacobi and her together regardless of what it had taken to get them there.  

 

***

 

While they were still sober enough to be rational they opted to swap between rakia, dinner, and  –when the meal was finished – Jacobi’s stockpile of cheese, so as to avoid the inevitable alcohol poisoning that 1.5 liters of rakia would give them.  

Once, when they were teenagers, Maxwell’s older brother made moonshine.  He, Maxwell, and one of her younger brothers (two years younger than Maxwell) drank it.  (Maxwell had been invited in only because she discovered their plot.  They were buying her silence, their parents would have all but flayed them alive for making booze.)  It had been extremely early in her drinking career and Maxwell honestly thought she was going to die.  The fire the rakia set in her chest, the flame in her throat, was similar.  Regardless of how well she held her alcohol she had felt  _ that  _ and she was feeling  _ this. _ The rakia was pretty close to the vile stuff – not in taste, she liked this fruity/sweet brandy more, even if it was far from her favorite booze – but it had the same burn, the same dizzying effects. 

They were getting into the bottle when Maxwell dared to say what was on her mind, regardless of how she knew Jacobi would react.  She’d been thinking about it while they were drinking quietly, Jacobi silently and sorrowfully nursing his glass, answering her briefly and, eventually, indistinctly.  Maxwell was more than slightly drunk herself.   The “liquid courage” helped Maxwell say what she did, she was sure.  

“Maybe…it wasn’t the worst thing to happen to you…” 

“What?!” Jacobi’s head snapped up from where it lay across his arm.  

“Shh,” Maxwell said, “hear me out…” 

“I lost my job!  Two of my coworkers died!  I lost  _ everything! _ ”  Jacobi reminded her.  

“I know,” Maxwell said, “I know, I know!  But…” 

“But  _ nothing _ —”

“ _ But! _ ” Maxwell pressed, “you got it back.” 

Jacobi blinked, his drunken mind trying to process what she had just said.  

“Goddard Futuristics found you,” Maxwell pointed out.  

“…Yeah,” Jacobi agreed. 

“I’m not going to pretend that those two men dying isn’t a big deal,” Maxwell said, “and you lost everything but…” 

“But I’ve got more now,” Jacobi said.  

“You work for  _ Goddard Futuristics!”  _ Maxwell reminded him. He was constantly praising Goddard for everything it had done for the world and the field of ballistics. He had more respect for Goddard than Maxwell did. He had more respect for Goddard than he did most things. He was honored to work for them.  Just as he was honored to work under Warren Kepler. He had nothing but adoration and respect for their CO. 

“Do you miss Ohio?” she asked, rubbing the side of her glass, worried about the answer.  Maybe there was something from that old life he was sorry to have left behind.

“No,” Jacobi said.

“Do you miss your old job?” 

“No,” he said, “I love my job now.”

“Do you... miss your coworkers?”  Maxwell winced. This was the answer she was most worried about. She knew in the logical part of her mind she shouldn’t be jealous, but the logical part of her mind was fading thanks to the rakia.  She knew that it was unlikely he had been closer to anyone than he was to her. They rarely said it aloud, but they both knew what they had was special.  Still she worried. She didn’t want to be runner up.

“No.” 

“Really?” 

“Yeah, really. They were fine. I was friendly with some of them, but it wasn’t like…” he trailed off. The unspoken “us” hung in the air between them. 

“Are you happier now?”

“…Yeah…yeah, I am,” Jacobi replied.  “Goddard is amazing. And you’ve said it yourself, they let you push the envelope.  Bigger booms.  Bigger things to break with bigger things to break them.  Power, adventure, explosions, respect…” Jacobi looked up.  “Major Kepler and  _ you _ .”  

Maxwell smiled.  She was infinitely glad for Jacobi as well.  She wasn’t anywhere near as close as to Kepler as Jacobi was.  Maxwell didn’t trust the Major.  She knew Jacobi did, but she couldn’t bring herself to.  There was something insidious about him, he always seemed to be hiding something behind his smiles.  She didn’t doubt he would throw them to the wolves if he had to.  He was selfish.  He was cruel.  Jacobi thought there was something more to Kepler’s feelings, that he genuinely cared, but Maxwell couldn’t believe that.  

But Jacobi?  Jacobi was her family.  What would she do without him?  What would she  _ be _ without him?  She had lived most of her life that way, she hadn’t met him all that long ago, but her life could be divided into two distinct parts: before Goddard and Jacobi, and after.  

There wasn’t anyone else like Daniel Jacobi.  There never would be.  He was her best friend, her confidant, her ally, her cheerleader, more of a brother than any of her three brothers had ever been.  He was her  _ partner.  _

“Can I say I’m glad it happened?” Maxwell asked.

“No,” Jacobi answered. 

“But it meant I got you.”  She was telling the truth.  She was glad for the worst day of Jacobi’s life.  That random horrible event had been the only thing that had brought them together, the only way their two wildly different existences would intertwine.   Some tiny flaw in Jacobi’s project.  A little error.  Some microscope mistake.  A short circuit. A glitch. And everything changed.  It triggered a series of events that meant Jacobi and Maxwell would meet.  A butterfly flapping its wings causing a hurricane.  Or perhaps a hurricane that somehow brought about a butterfly. Twisted chaos theory. 

“I wish it could have happened differently,” Jacobi muttered.  

“I do, too,” Maxwell said.  “But it  _ didn’t _ happen differently.”  

“But it could have…” 

“That doesn’t matter!” Maxwell snapped, “ _ could  _ have,  _ should  _ have, blah blah blah!” 

“They didn’t deserve it,” Jacobi muttered.

Maxwell scoffed.  “ _ You’re _ the one who told me that people don’t get what they deserve!  Remember when Pontus died?  Remember what you told me?”  That had been their first mission together. They were in Germany trying to repair Pontus, an MX450 AI. They accidentally uncovered a conspiracy that they violently unraveled, and cost Pontus his life. Maxwell had been there in his last moments when his killer implanted a virus that obliterated him. 

“Not at the moment,” Jacobi said blearily.

“You said that it’s never about what people deserve,” Maxwell said.  “You don’t deserve what happened to you.  Martinez and Fitzpatrick didn’t either.  But it happened anyway.  Shit happens.  All you can do is keep moving forward.”  

“I said that?” 

“I may have adapted it a little,”  Maxwell answered.  

There was a long pause.  Jacobi swayed a little in his seat. He opened his mouth, shut it again, then said, “I meant what I said.” 

“Which part?” Maxwell asked.  “You’ve said a lot of stuff tonight and some of it was pretty stupid.” 

Jacobi laughed.  “I meant what I said about meeting you.  You’re my best friend.”

Maxwell smiled, “Aw, you big sap, you’re my best friend, too.”  

He grinned at her.   The moment passed without another word as they both tossed back more booze. They were not good at these emotional moments. They usually went by without comment, the words never leaving either of their heads.  Jacobi and Maxwell knew those feelings were there, but they were rarely addressed. 

“I wish…” he said slowly, “I wish I knew what happened.” He stared into his half-empty glass, his free hand tightened into a fist for a moment where it sat on the table.   

“I bet,” Maxwell said. She couldn’t imagine what it must have been like, not knowing and having no way to know.  It could have been his fault, but then it might not have been, still he couldn’t utterly convince himself either way. Even if he knew definitively that it  _ was  _ something he did, some fundamental flaw rather than a freak glitch, she’d be able to help him through it. He even might have been able to push himself forward. But that big question mark, unknown and horribly unknowable, she couldn’t think of anything that would torture her more. That was probably why the Incident was always in the back of his head, why he ran through it, desperately searching for an answer that wasn’t there. 

“It’s been killing me for five fucking years,” he sighed. “What the Hell happened?  It wouldn’t work. It just wouldn’t work and then...then it did. Was it a mechanical error?  Was it a miscalculation?  If I’d been smarter could I have worked it out?” 

“You’re smart,” Maxwell assured him. 

“The answer is buried in some file in an Air Force basement somewhere.  Dammit, I just want to know so bad!” 

“I know.”

“I know one thing.”

“Yeah?”

“I shouldn’t have sent them in,” he shook his head.

“Now you know.”

“Because I fucked up.” 

“Yep,” Maxwell agreed. 

“Not helping.” 

“I was there when Pontus died.  If I’d been faster I could have saved him.  If I was just a little bit better he wouldn’t have died. If I did it today… if we were on that mission right now… Pontus would still be alive. But you know what?  I lost. I fucked up.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said taking a sip, “About Pontus.”

“That’s not the point,” she shook her head.  “It’s about  _ you _ .  We all have regrets.  And we all get better.  That’s the thing about being a person.” 

“I’m still sorry.”

“I’m sorry about Martinez and Fitzpatrick.  I’m sorry you spent two years out of work.” 

“Me, too.” A pause. “But maybe you’re right about it not being...not being the worst thing.” 

“I know I’m right. It’s chaos theory,” Maxwell said.  

“Thanks, Dr. Malcolm,” said Jacobi.  

  
  
  


***

  
  


After that, conversation brightened considerably.  She was able to pull him through it and onto lighter things, starting with  _ Jurassic Park _ .  

Eventually, and Maxwell wasn’t sure when exactly it was, when they were down to a third of a bottle and night had waned into early morning, after they’d argued about the validity and coolness of James Bond for the thousandth time, (Jacobi for, Maxwell against), Jacobi started to snore from where he lay splayed on the floor.  Maxwell laughed and he woke with a start.  He sat bolt upright, almost banging his head on the table.  “Whazzat?” 

“I think,” she said, blearily, “I think it might be time for bed.”  She hadn’t planned on them getting this drunk. She’d severely underestimated the rakia.  Maxwell tried to stand up and nearly fell over.  She grabbed the chair for support and Jacobi staggered to his feet to grab her by the other arm.  He wobbled as Maxwell leaned against him, wrapping her arm around him, hoping they could drunkenly balance each other out.  

“I think,” said Jacobi slurring just as much as Maxwell had, “I think you might be right.”  He laughed, then he started to sing.  “Well, show me the way to the next whiskey bar!”  He had an awful singing voice at the best of times, made worse by the booze.  It took Maxwell’s hazy mind a moment to realize he was attempting a Jim Morrison impression.  “Oh, don’t ask why!  Oh, don’t ask why!”  

Maxwell laughed and then decided to join him.  “Show me the way to the next whiskey bar!”  

They continued, each with an arm wrapped around the other, Jacobi’s around her shoulder, Maxwell reaching his chest thanks to the ten inches difference in their heights.  They staggered like they were in a three-legged race.  They kept singing. “For if we don’t find the next whiskey bar, I tell you we must die!  I tell you we must die!  I tell you! I tell you!  I tell you we must die!” 

Maxwell tried to elbow Jacobi as he filled in the instrumental singing, “Da da dum, da da dum, da dee da – da da dum.”  She overbalanced from the action.  He caught her before she hit the ground, hauled her back up, tried to pull her into a fireman’s carry but fell over himself.  From the floor they both burst out laughing.  Somehow they finally made it to the stairs, hauling their heavy bodies up.  “The moooooon of Alabaaaaamaaaaa, now must say goodbyyyeee!” here Maxwell didn’t know the words and devolved into humming.  Jacobi provided the “We’ve lost our dear old maaamaaaaaaa.” 

“And we must have whiskey oh you know why!” they sang together.  

“Da da da dum!” Jacobi added.  

They didn’t bother putting on pajamas or brushing teeth.  Maxwell barely managed to pull her ponytail out.  “The room won’t stop spinning,” she laughed as they collapsed into bed.  

Jacobi was face down in his pillow.  “Mmph,” he responded.  Maxwell burrowed under the blankets, wrapping them around herself.  Jacobi groaned a complaint.  There were a few silent moments, Jacobi was not yet snoring, which told her he was not yet asleep.  

“Jacobi?” she asked.

“Mmph?” he said again, more inquisitively this time.  

“How do you feel?” 

“Smashed?” His voice was less muffled as he turned his head out of the pillow.  

“That’s not what I mean,” she said.  “How do you  _ feel _ ?” 

Jacobi sighed.  “Maybe it’s the rakia talking, but that wasn’t so bad for an Anniversary.  Thanks.” 

“Same time next year?” she asked.

“Nah,” he said. “I don’t think I need another one.” 

Maxwell smiled. “Good. I don’t think I could take it.” 

Luckily the day after the Anniversary was Saturday.  Maxwell and Jacobi spent it lying around, groaning at each other, and cursing the invention of rakia.    
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> You can check out [my Tumblr](http://queenofthecommunistcannibals.tumblr.com/) I reblog a lot of _Wolf 359_ stuff and sometimes write fics there that I don't post here. :3


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